


The Book of All

by dondizzzzzle



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Aliens, Androids, Constructed Language, Constructed Reality, Existentialism, Gen, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original Universe, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, cosmic horror, nature of reality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27086545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dondizzzzzle/pseuds/dondizzzzzle
Summary: "Knowledge is power," most say, but power corrupts all the same. See, knowledge exists as a pyramid. Very many things know nothing, but only one knows everything. To climb the pyramid isn't difficult, up to some point. The climb can be a taxing thing; the climb can deteriorate the mind and render knowledge worthless. Because, you see, knowledge can't replace everything.Amelia Wakefield took the climb by personal invitation.She met every obstacle the universe could come up with, but knowledge is too powerful. Curiosity is too powerful. The New York editor once abducted by aliens now finds herself at the controls. The New York editor once blind of mind now finds herself aware of the many things she can know. Curiosity drove her by the neck, and dragged her like a noose to the very near top of the pyramid.Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought her back
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)





	1. Spilled Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> To all the people whom I’ve made smile
> 
> For a universe of great ideas

Pale light spills across the street. The late winter gleams with empty sunshine, cooling more than it warms. Grey snow clings to the road beside a sweet little café called “The Moon.”

Disappointment hangs in the air.

People shouldn’t speak if they have nothing worthwhile to say. Unfortunately, the few say otherwise, and so they say at the top of their lungs. The few embody an elusive group, cult-like in their vast denial of common sense. Often it’s easier to find them online, insulting a topic they refuse to understand and denying every effort to be taught otherwise, as if learning something new would maim and gag them beyond recognition. Every keystroke is an argument; every defense boils down to, "I’m right, you’re wrong, I don’t need to prove it."

_ The more incompetent you are, the less incompetent you think you are. _

Amelia Wakefield has dealt with this type of incompetence a dozen too many times. She’s an editor, one who works for a desperate publication. In other words: the newspaper will accept anything.  _ They’d beg on their knees if they could. _ She sits accompanied by a laptop and a cold cup of coffee, burdened beneath an elaborate, failed, and pointless attempt to disprove climate change:

"… All over the world, world leaders are wasting money on fictional causes, especially the efforts to stop  _ "global warming" _ : something no one has yet to prove. Even with thousands of dollars spent on giant spinning fans and solar panels, I have yet to see a change in temperature…"

_ Make that a baker’s dozen. _

Amelia’s leeching free wifi from the Moon. The bitter-sweet scent of coffee skims the air, giving off a scent of nostalgia. Weaving through the store from the entrance to the counter is a path dragged by years of sleepless footsteps. In essence, the Moon is a step in time. It seems to exist along a tear down the middle of a moment. A step inside is one into a world between the ledges of a momentous fissure, inside which every second brings on the sense that something strange might happen. Every step along the stones of this senseless path leads one further down the assumption that something feels wrong. For a second, the little coffee shop on the corner feels more substantial than simply run-down.

_ Happenstance is strange like that. _

Amy glares into the poor excuse, never finding a mistake worse than the author’s decision to write it in the first place. The keys clack for what seem like hours, all spent staring into the empty, bottomless abyss created by one’s sheer lack of thought. She glances at the time: it’s 8:22 and nearly a half hour since she came in. As the sun creeps over the horizon, it leaves a web of long shadows overlooking the Moon. The door chimes every few minutes. Amy leans back so her chair stands on two legs. The white dawn wanes her heading ache; lightless sunshine dissolves her cloud of frustration.

Like usual, Amy has her seat by the door. Dull winterlight seeps through the window and bathes the corner in snowy white dawn. The café’s many drowsèd voices seem to converge here, painting a landscape of noise to further push one along a strange train of thought.

Staining the screen of Amelia’s laptop is another stroke of words torn across the page by a meritless debater: "… If the world is heating up, then how come I can go outside and see it snowing? I swear if we keep funding these stupid projects, we'll end up destroying ourselves…"

_ Humanity is legally not allowed to destroy itself. _

The café begins to dissolve as Amy sets her chair back on four legs; lights, sounds, and smells mute to nothing as the screen and its stain of writing seize her attention.  _ Unemployment always looms.  _ Brunette curls coil over narrowed eyes. Rattling keys punctuate moments of silence and disappointment, and as she comes upon the end, Amy breathes relief. The last line, pleasantly disregarding its author’s obvious few lobotomies, closes off on a partly eloquent note.

_ In spite of her integrity, money not only talks, but persuades. _

Folding shut her laptop, Amelia wraps her attention back around coffee, lukewarm after a half hour’s neglect.  _ It’s somebody else’s problem now. _ Amy drags a long breath and leans back in her chair.

Sitting across the shop is someone who's unable to remember his name. The man’s leg bounces up and down at three Hertz sharp and there isn’t a second when his hands aren’t moving. The chair and table both sit with uneven footing. His shadow constantly changes shape.

_ She’ll find better. _

Lit in half by the sun, the man fidgets beside the window with an unlabelled coffee. His name as of sixty seconds ago is Henry. Henry’s eyes are flat and expressionless; they dart there and there at tiny, pseudorandom points yet fail to see anything but distraction. Everywhere he looks, he looks somewhere else, as if staring too long would ensnare him in some kind of trap.

_ Patience. _

The man’s head is covered in a thick carpet of matte black, every thread of which flailing to the breeze of a cracked-open window.

He turns the cup in his hands. Scalding liquid splashes inside though the man returns no reaction. Henry looks over the cup’s sleeve wearing a calculated expression. He isn't interested in drinking coffee. In fact, he wonders why he bought any in the first place.

_ A good blend to blend with. _

Henry rests his entire weight upon the chair as if competing with someone else to see who can sit the least comfortably without falling. Weird and concerned looks are already being thrown his way. He shifts his weight for the umpteenth time and the chair just about collapses. Bending wood shrieks among the café. More looks fall. A wave of terror flits across his face and a leaden breath up his throat.

Burdened by the café’s estranged staring, Henry darts to catch himself, his legs seeming to move on their own accord. He sits up straight for the first time since he sat down.

Some twinkle in the man’s eyes disappears.

Dawning light obscures the expressions of passers-by; the window flickers with pedestrians. Scanning their darkened faces, Henry jumps to whom he thinks he recognises.

A bloodcurdling scream startles Amy off balance.

Coffee drips from the edges of the table. Henry jumps back; his chair falls and batters the tiling. Thoughts pass over his mind with little time to get their ideas across, but the words they’ve seconds to speak piece together a terrible, terrible plan. He awkwardly half-kneels to retrieve his jacket, black leather lined with fur, and tears a hole in it putting it on. The man shoves across the café as if trying to walk without using his ankles.

_ More worried looks. _

The man makes several trips between the counter and his table for an increasing number of paper towels. Kneeling in a puddle of brew, Henry soaks his hands and pants trying to be polite and clean after himself.  _ Quite rare a trait, to be honest. _ The man feels a stabbing pain as he stands. His legs from the knees down suffer as if he left during a session of freestyle acupuncture. Panic rises in his throat. Ideas more and more frantic shove into his head, squeezing rational thought out of his ears like toothpaste from a tube. 

_ Luck hasn’t been on Amy’s side recently. _

Henry’s feet grapple the ground like bricks and threaten to shatter the tiling below. Amy watches the figure put its entire weight on the chair across from her. She drags her seat a few inches back.

“Do you-- Do you mind if I sit down?,” asks Henry as if he hasn’t met a human being in years.

Waiting not for an answer, Henry collapses. The chair follows him down, beshouting a scene already strange enough to begin with.

_ It looks like he wet himself. _

Amelia shrieks, “Oh my god! Are you okay?,” she stands to address the body and her seat groans a metre backwards.

“I’m sorry,” visible behind his pants are brittle marks which poke against the fabric, pushing his joints amiss with every passing second, “Please help,” he breathes.

“What do you need, what’s wrong?”

He attempts to pull himself into an upright position as his fingers rapidly degrade, “Help-- Help me up, please; I can’t feel my legs.”

Panic seeps into Amelia’s veins like a neurotoxin. She unhangs her bag from the chair and stows her laptop inside, strapping it about her shoulder to leave her hands the trouble of carrying a body out the door. Amy grips the man by his shoulders and attempts in vain to lift him upright. She comes close to tweaking her back and drops Henry onto the tiling; his head rings like a bell.

“Ow! Be careful!,” Henry’s voice sticks to his throat, stretching as he speaks.

“Sorry! Hold on.”

Amelia snakes his arm over her shoulder and pulls it taut across her neck. Some weird notch in his elbow makes itself apparent; it digs into her skin like a pen, close to but never breaking the surface.

Her face flushes pink with effort, “Here, can you-- can you stand up?,” she demands.

“Let me try…”

Henry dangles his legs beneath him. His feet can hardly find the ground. Amy’s grip falters as she attempts to lower him upon the floor, and as Henry falls, she pulls his shirt and jacket into his face. 

Webster's Dictionary describes pain as “ _ localised physical suffering associated with bodily disorder.” _ Though Henry doesn’t at the moment have access to the internet, he should know.

His legs are folding the wrong way.

Upon witnessing Henry’s best imitation of a sitting ostrich, Amelia feels a viscous panic wedge itself into her nerves. She grips the man by his shoulders and seeks to right his wronged knees. The joints crackle as they unfold. Amy’s stomach winds around her spine like thread about a spindle.

The man drags a harsh breath akin to a violent gas leak. With a small spark and little shards of material poking through his skin, agony flares across his nervous system like wildfire. Dragging Henry across the café, Amy wears a trail contrary to the worn drammed from the door. The bell tolls to concerned expressions and the two disappear onto the sparse, snowy streets of New York. Amelia’s face brightens to the reddish wind. Her eyes cross to watch the fog she breathes; with every inch she drags the man, she wonders why his breath isn’t fogging, too.

She waves like a lunatic at oncoming traffic, hoping she can hail a taxi. No one stops. Henry’s weight begins to tax her nerves.

“Hey,” Amy lowers her burden onto the sidewalk, “Please, is there anyone you can call to pick you up? You need a hospital.”

The man hesitates as if something were taxing him to keep a secret, “Yeah, I’m waiting for someone to arrive, actually, but she absolutely cannot see me like this,” he tilts his head a little to better see Amy’s face, “Do you think I could stay at your place to wait, wherever it is?”

“What?”

“I won’t be long, I swear,” Henry’s eyes appear to twinkle, “I just need a place to stay for a bit!”

“No!,” Amy releases her grasp around Henry’s shoulders, “Why would I--”

He seizes her jacket.

Amy shrieks to a halt mid-syllable. She writhes to free herself, but the man’s grip resembles a vice. Her sleeves come undone; both her jacket and her bag fall onto the sidewalk in front of Henry.

“Are you insane?!,” her voice shatters, “Is this the thanks I get for trying to help? What’s wrong with you?!”

Henry flips onto his stomach, “Please!”

“Didn’t you  _ just _ say you had somebody picking you up, can’t you just call them and tell them where you are?”

“Well actually,” Henry replies, “I just remembered I left my phone at home, sorry.”

Amy rifles through her pocket, “Here, you can use mine, make it quick,” she says.

“Yeah… about that,” Henry sets himself upon his elbows to see Amelia’s exacerbated expression, “She doesn’t exactly…  _ have… _ a number…”

_ “What?!” _

“I’ll try to explain later,” he says, “Just, please,  _ please, _ help me out here. Your home isn’t far from here, right?”

Several red flags shoot up from the ground like blood squirts from a wound. Amy pauses. "Who in their right mind would do that?" is a very good question to be asking.

There's just one problem:  _ no human is ever in their right mind. _

Amy's no exception.

She groans,  _ “Fine, _ just… let me take this back,” and reclaims her jacket and the laptop bag around its sleeve.

Henry’s eyes seem to twinkle tenfold as much. Amy rushes forward to wrap his arm again around her shoulder, and mentally prepares herself to drag the poor sod two blocks to her apartment.

“Have I mentioned you weigh like a ton?,” Amy spits, the muscles in her legs and back searing with effort.

"Well I’m sorry, I thought aluminum was supposed to be light!," snaps the dead weight, regretting instantly.

Little bytes of information seem to clash inside Amy’s head,  _ “What?” _

“Nothing, I said nothing,” says Henry.

She stops, “Who  _ are _ you?”

“I’ll- I’ll try to explain later!,” he replies with a nervous laugh, “Actually, why don’t we make it sooner?”

The urge to drop him and run passes over her for a moment.

_ Unfortunately, Amy considers herself a nice person. _

She forces Henry off the ground and into her arms, likely pulling a muscle somewhere. Her face glows with effort; her breath fogs with regret. The strain in her legs, her back, and her motivation throttles remorse into her throat, but if Amy is anything other than a competent writer, she’s stubborn.

_ Unbearably stubborn. _

The two inch as one across the pavement. Mounds of snow edge the sidewalk and the cold seems to grind its teeth upon Amy’s skin. At the ungodly hour of 8:38 in the morning, not many people seem to roam the streets of New York. Of the people who do, however, few stop to help. Even fewer stop to ask questions. Most, if not all, seem to turn a blind eye, as if making eye contact would root them in place and suck them across the pavement to help.

Dragging a body is a hell of a workout.

Fifteen minutes are lost to never be redeemed and the two finally arrive at Amy’s apartment building. Amy adjusts her grasp upon shoulders unnaturally smooth and rigid. She realises the four floors between her and her room and falls into her own stomachful of dread. She drags Henry through the door and enters her code to unlock the next. The man’s ankles scrape against the floor, jarring out two thin lines as he’s pulled along.

_ Oblivious. _

Henry looks upside down at the steps, wearing a mask of concern, "Oh, please don't tell me you're gonna go up there.”

Amy shuffles to an awkward position under his immense weight, "Well…," she nearly loses her balance, "… I won't tell you."

She proceeds toward the stairwell, determined. Readjusting her grip on his arms, she hauls him the first step up. He frowns, "Isn’t there an elevator you can take instead of hurting yourself like this?"

Amy’s face turns scarlet through one part effort and several parts shame. She doesn't reply, rather she strains her full body to raise the man another step. Her arms, her legs burn. Every pace upwards feels an hour longer than the last, until seconds crawl to a near halt upon the last step. She lowers Henry to the ground to free her hands. Everything is sore. She risks a glance into the lobby, and to her endless humiliation sees an elevator, one which she neglected just minutes ago out of headstrong tunnel vision.

Henry sits up and notes her mortified expression, "There  _ was _ an elevator, wasn’t there?,” he sneers.

With the last of her breath, Amy snaps, "Well it’s too late now to roll your  _ fat ass _ over there. Unless you want me to kick you down the stairs so you can crawl there yourself."

The urge leaves her mind as she realises it requires effort.

She takes a moment to regain her strength, withering at the insufferable dumbbell the whole time.

Amy drags him two more flights of stairs, holding onto some miracle by the thin strands of a thread. Having cremated several thousand calories in a few minutes, Amelia drops the man to rest herself the burden of her bad decisions. Henry's head cracks like a gunshot, in other words: absolutely nothing like bone would sound hitting ceramic.

Amelia jumps about a foot in the air,  _ “Fuck!,"  _ she lands to feel her heart kick her chest like several men kick someone lying in a pool of their own blood.

_ "Ow!  _ Be careful!," cries Henry, "You don't just throw someone on the ground like that!"

"What the hell was that?! Was that you?"

"What do you mean, 'was that you?,' " Henry snaps, sitting up to get a better look at the organic.

"Who— Who are you? What are you— What  _ are _ you?”

_ That comment about aluminium seems to resurface. _

Henry begins calculating the best alternative to,  _ "I'm an android, you organic dipshit." _

Putting his answer through multiple filters, he instead says, "Think of me as... an artificial human."

"An artificial human? So you're like... a robot?"

Henry bluescreens.

Now appears to be the perfect time to discuss the difference between robots and androids:

A  _ robot _ is a  _ machine _ , created solely for reading and interpreting predetermined instructions and performing them as accurately as possible. Robots can  _ in no way _ think for themselves  _ nor _ do they have minds of their own. That simply does not exist within their programming.  _ Androids,  _ on the other hand, are  _ nothing _ like robots; they don’t have programming, and they don’t unquestioningly follow orders. Androids represent living minds within metal containers,  _ not _ mindless metal boxes.

_ "Hey!," _ Henry bursts.

"What? What did I say?!"

"You don't just throw words around like that! I wouldn’t call you  _ monkey _ for the hell of it, wouldn’t I?!"

"Well– Well I didn't know that!," Amy stammers, "What am I supposed to call you, then?"

"My  _ name _ is Henry.  _ Use it." _

Amy stumbles over the android’s words, "Hen– Henry?," she says, "Wait, wait, so you're saying your name isn't something like a… serial code or something? They don’t name androids like that?"

"You couldn't pronounce my actual name…”

Finding it hard to keep her composure, Amy smiles, "Does– is it like– is it like dial-up internet?"

"What?," Henry blinks, "What's that?"

She laughs, "Don't worry about it, call me Amy."

Henry finds himself unable to calculate a reply. He shuts up for a second to focus on hacking the wifi.

Amy catches her breath enough to sober and pulls the remaining distance to her apartment. Every grip she finds around the android’s arms appears to pull some joint apart to pierce her skin. The android himself struggles to keep his head as Amelia drags him further upward. His arms and the strange constructions within force her to pause every few minutes to make sure she nor the stairs haven’t torn him to pieces.  _ The journey upward is a painful one. _ Amy grows uncomfortable in the silence. Henry redirects power from his limbs for better use in computing; he falls limp in her arms. She stops for a second, startled by his sudden lack of resistance, but continues after noticing her fingers begin to slip.

_ It’s much easier to drag a limp body than it is a resistant one. _

Breathing a long sigh of relief, Amy inches the body the last step to the fourth floor. Everything burns. The person-shaped sack of skin and computer parts still lays limp across the ground, ever closer to cracking someone’s wifi password. Amelia sets him down nearby and crosses the hall to her apartment. She wipes regret from her forehead. Keys jingle. 

Wikipedia describes dial-up internet as: "a form of  Internet access that uses the facilities of the  public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an  Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a  telephone number on a conventional  telephone line ."

Henry seizes control of his limbs, in the process slamming his head against the wall. Amy jumps; her keys startle onto the ground.

_ “Shit!,"  _ she snaps, "Don’t scare me like that!"

"Sorry," says Henry, "I redirected power from my arms and legs to hack into someone’s internet, and when I finished… this," he kneads the firing pain sensors in the back of his head.

“You can do that?”

“Yeah!,” replies the android, “Well… I can, I don’t know about anyone else,” his eyes seem to glow with his remark.

Amy reclaims her keys. The lock clicks. The door opens. The body drags. She pushes through the room wearing Henry around her shoulders and happily greets the apartment.

Usually three’s a crowd, not two.

Furniture further subtracts from her available space. Amy likes furniture. An old, smeared coffee table sits in the centre: around it, a bed, a sofa, a desk, and several different styles of end table. Both the mattress and the cushions carry the impression of having been slept on for hours. The room seems to demand visitors leave immediately. One can imagine imaginary spines sticking out of every surface.

Amy shuffles into the space, rambling through a tight gap, gripping Henry to the ends of her fingers. She had left the window wide open before leaving, draped with curtains which float like mist in the breeze. The pale sun peeks between the drapings into the room beyond. Bland walls are cascaded with waves of bumps and bruises, representing dozens of failed attempts to hang a photo.

Exhausted, Amy seats Henry on the sofa and paces the room, waiting for the problem to magically fix itself.

_ Unfortunately, Amelia’s living a science fiction, not a fantasy. _

Fortunately, Henry’s a self-repairing android. By that, he means to say he's learned to self-medicate. With hands no better than his legs, he examines the site of the spill. Soft whirring can be heard through his pants. Amy watches. Her worries won’t shut up. Every twitch of the android’s hands swirls another drop of nervous ink into her stomach.

The android draws Amelia's attention to the kitchen.

Amy flinches; her thoughts spiral, "Why in the world do you need a knife?," her voice splinters with the final twist of her mind into panic.

"Repairs."

Amy hesitates. The android’s unblinking stare burns into her forehead. She disappears into a small kitchen connected to the very end of her apartment as if to avoid him boring a hole into her skull. The counter is cluttered, the space compressed to be as small a kitchen as possible. She proceeds to stall as long as she can to avoid touching anything sharp. Amelia moves a stack of manuscripts aside and glances over the marble. Henry has removed his shoes. 

_ What kind of psychopath wears shoes and no socks? _

Finally, she palms a knife.

Henry eyes the edge; he wears an unnervingly still expression. Reluctant, Amy hands him the blade. His gaze glides up and down the knife as he turns it in his hands. Amy winces in anticipation, her mind racing.

Henry proceeds to drive the knife into his thigh.

Amy shrieks and twists; her voice tears, "What are you doing?!”

Henry’s surprisingly calm for having been stabbed in the leg, he glances up, "Like I said: repairs."

"Wh– What?," she stammers, "Why– What– Why would you–?"

Henry ignores the question.

He drags the blade through his leg, absolutely ruining his pants and leaving a long gash in his thigh. Amy turns to avoid the sight. Her stomach churns; the world stumbles into a blind, drunken dance around her _._ She staggers into the bathroom and gags over the sink. The scene repeats inside her head over and over and over and over. Her reflection shares her dread, staring back with dilute, clouded amber. Amelia tries desperately to push the thought away. The faucet spits up cold water. Her soft curls are rendered straight.

She returns to find Henry tearing the legs off his pants.

“You would think they try to test this stuff to make sure water can’t get in,” he gripes, “But no, why would we care?”

The android peels back a layer of mesh bonded to his khakis. He groans. Coffee drips from the false skin.

“What a mess…”

Henry digs up a grotesque sponge of plastic and sets it aside. The android reclaims the knife and pulls a scar across his femur. Upon striking a cooling tube just below his kneecap, Henry winces.  _ Sounds like a good time to stop cutting. _ He removes more false muscle to reveal his insides are encrusted in slightly coffee-coloured, metallic minerals. Amy’s been staring.

Henry glances up to meet her morbid curiosity, “Now what do you suppose caused all this?,” he says, pointing at the gems with his knife, “The caffeine or the water?”

“What?,” Amelia flinches, “Oh, I don’t know…”

The android nods; he clicks his knee out of his leg, “Alright,” he replies, “Hey, do you think you could get me a towel or something? I don’t want to make a mess of your apartment.”

"Yeah, sure, I'll– I'll do that,” she stammers.

Amelia tears her eyes from Henry's exposed machinery. She returns from the bathroom with a wet face and a large towel. Amy watches as Henry unfurls it beneath his legs and shoves the coffee table forward as far as the apartment allows. False muscle which had previously stained the couch now dries upon the towel. Amy finds her gaze fixed upon the gnarl of tubes and wires snaking around Henry’s aluminium frame. Her eyes follow the threads up and down. She picks apart what each piece might do behind the layer of–

"Can you  _ stop staring?" _

"Oh!"

Amy's face inexplicably turns red.

"It gets uncomfortable, you know," Henry slams his knee against the table, producing an explosion of coffee-shards, "You organics are too fascinated by everything."

The organic in question struggles to push out an answer, "I– I… Well… I didn't know it would be…," she trails off.

_ Beware of curiosity. _

Henry frowns behind his work, sucking air between his teeth as he tries to carve out more of his insides, “Here, clean the coffee off this piece if you want.”

The organic takes a screwdriver from an embarrassing IKEA shelf. She turns the gyroscope in her hands, struggling to determine which side is up. Fear, even shame, whisper their way into the back of her mind where they certainly aren’t welcome. Her face twists to a mixed expression. She stares into the module like she would at the face of death, or at a newborn, at a wedding band, or a rotting piece of roadkill. Nonetheless, Amy works.

_ She’s a nice person, after all. _

Brittle brown gems stick up from a slit between two bits that were once supposed to spin. Amy cranes her wrist to poke the screwdriver through the unmoving parts. She makes steady progress.

Another piece thuds against the coffee table. Only a few shards actually land on the towel. Henry’s skeleton is designed for easy maintenance, evident by the click as he slots a motor back into his leg. He finds his khakis weren’t ruined enough, and drives his knife into his opposite thigh.

“I should’ve changed these pants a long time ago…”


	2. Respect the Book

Silence has weight.

Though it doesn’t begin as heavy as one expects, it grows. It pounds against the mind. It weighs thought as heavy as every word omitted, each one waiting, unable to escape. _Stuck._ The stillness grows uncomfortable with each second more the two pass working. It rests on their heads in the same way a table which wobbles back and forth rests on the ground. Both fear breaking first; to break the silence is just as wrong as moving a sleeping dog.

Amy drives her tool between Henry's severed servo, scraping up the last bit of coffee. She sets the android’s knee on the coffee table and cringes watching him push the blade a concerning distance into his leg. Scraping metal fills the otherwise still room. Henry sets the knife down; he snaps his inner workings together along the gaps built into his skeleton.

The android wakes the silence, "Give that to me since you’re done with it."

She hands him his knee.

"Don't worry about anything else," Henry takes the motor in soft rigid hands, "You’ve done enough."

More silence.

The android to Amy’s dismay pulls the knee out of his opposite leg. Metal scraping fills the room. The knife catches along pieces of solid coffee, and occasionally shoots out of the motor in a concerning direction. Henry, once his knee is clean, places the knife upon the coffee table and balls up the towel beneath his legs.

“Thank you.”

Amy nods. She walks the knife into the kitchen and returns empty-handed. Henry pulls the coffee table to its original position. His legs squeak as he lowers them onto the floor.  
That reminds him, “Oh yeah,” he remarks, “Do you have any cooking spray, or oil, or something?”

“I do, hold on,” replies Amy.

She heads back into the kitchen. Various cans and spices threaten to fall out of the cupboard, a few of them caught on their way to the ground. Amy returns to find Henry with his knees in his lap. He takes the cooking spray and douses them both in an unnecessary amount of oil.

"Do you feel anything when your legs are open like that?," Amy’s voice seems to hesitate in her throat.

Henry steals a glance at the organic, he shrugs, "Not particularly, no."

"But didn’t it hurt when you stabbed yourself?”

"Of course it did! I definitely need to feel pain when something’s gone wrong," the android fastens his left knee, "How else would I be able to know?"

"Couldn’t a notification or something flash in front of your eyes, like to let you know?," Amy says, waving a hand over her face.

Henry glares up at a human who clearly knows nothing about anatomical engineering, "It’s much easier to program a feeling than a visual notification for every cord and tube in my body. Plus, imagine not being able to see what’s right in front of your face because you had an ache in your foot,” he gestures, “If I were to blind myself, it would be deliberate."

Henry stands to test his workmanship. His aluminium skeleton glows with dim starlight as it peeks through the window.

Amelia remarks, “Were your legs always this… bony?”

“I don’t know if you can call these bones,” the android paces through her apartment, “But yeah, no, all that fake skin and muscle is useless now.”

Unfortunately, no store on planet Earth sells _anything_ to do with androids, nor are they allowed to in the first place.

If it wasn’t already obvious, androids are not native earthlings. A large majority of them are created far beyond the solar system, on a planet called Tehk. Aside from having the most accurate name in the universe, with its name meaning "the ground" in one of the native languages, Tehk is built on the back of near-godlike technology. The civilisation boasts a rich three billion year history orbiting a red dwarf, the lifespan of which could carry them another fifty.

The unabridged history of Tehk, with all its shifting continents, extinction events, and great discoveries, doesn’t belong in a science fiction story of two or three hundred pages. It’s not important.

Faint ringing sounds from Henry’s person.

“What’s that? I thought you _didn’t_ have a phone,” Amy stands, chasing the android’s answer.

“I still don’t,” he replies.

The android taps his “ear” and audio seems to spring out of nowhere. White noise fills the room awhile, then a stark, gentle voice enters. Her words ring unfamiliar across Amy’s ear, the consonants smooth and lazy, the vowels more so the same.

 _"Kut ja tani? N’akrujo sha tjake në sha kafe. Ka ves dio?,"_ asks the voice, wearing a concerned tone.

Henry snaps back, _"Aidjë bë serdë; bei më reisha t’io myrten ai fvil më varui’dje aika terranje. Huqju sha atom je aumal.”_

_"Terrame!? Ka ves terramje ai?! Ha shei’qahk hana, hila sudhaeshumi."_

The line cuts off, leaving Henry’s jaw hanging in the shape of a reply. Amy fills over the brim with questions, her confusion behaving like a faucet.

"What the _hell_ was that?," she spills.

 _"That,"_ Henry replies, "was the woman I was talking about, the one I told you would be picking me up."

“I thought you said she didn’t have a number!”  
“Well she _kind of_ does!,” Henry blurts, “It’s just not _really_ a number, it doesn’t really… exist… either.”

Amy takes a long pause to process what Henry could possibly have meant, confusion showing visibly upon her face, "No, that’s not what I-- I didn’t-- Whatever. What were you saying?"

Henry explains, "Oh, that?," the android sets himself down in an attempt to get comfortable on Amy’s sofa, "That was a language you and all other humans would consider totally alien."

Amy’s eyes widen, then narrow in disbelief, "First androids, now aliens?! What next? Will–"

Before Amy can finish let alone begin her rant, a loud thud seizes her and Henry's attention.

In her spare time, Amelia Wakefield writes books. The hobby gives her an excuse to steal into her apartment for days and scour the internet for distractions. Amy's way with words is the kind that keeps pages turning for some, and for others left halfway before losing interest. Of all her writing, the crown jewel in her eyes is a long, heartfelt trilogy about a girl who falls helplessly in love with an alien.

What had thud to the floor was the second volume: "Lightyears Apart." It’s on the ground, separated from the beginning and end of its trilogy.

Amy keeps all her works on a small bookcase she has pressed into the corner of her apartment. Every book she's ever written and read, from science fiction to cosmic horror, sits cramped in the few shelves she can access.

In the story's spot is a volume Amy doesn't recognise.

She reclaims her novel from the floor, getting a closer look at the strange book taking its place. The only thing drawn on its spine is the symbol for infinity in gold. Its cover’s totally black, shining in stained leather like the kind Henry’s torn jacket is made of. Thin threads of gold crawl across the black, writing into and out of unnatural shapes and patterns. The air around the book produces a mute and distracting buzz. Amy sets the second in her trilogy atop the shelf for another chance to look in detail at the peculiar black tome.

_It’s humming._

She finds it difficult to keep her attention on it for long. As Amy looks, her eyes, her mind, wander in a different direction. She reaches for the book. Her skin crawls. The leather coils beneath her fingers, hurting with the same pain as dragging one's nails across a chalkboard. The cover is pitch dark. A lemniscate is engraved into its centre like it is on its spine. The writhing array of gold spindles from the emblem in deranged, changing forms.

Henry peeks over Amy's shoulder, producing a face calculated to most efficiently express interest. His eyes dim upon the leather, gazing as tendrils of sunlight dance off its surface. He sees the same book, he watches Amy open it.

"It's blank?," they ask.

Amy fiddles with the book, turning it one way, then another. Every single page is completely blank.

"How did this get here?"

The book suddenly releases a low drone, not too different from the sound of moving a heavy piece of furniture. It flips to its first page in Amy’s hands; caught off guard, she jumps and tosses it across the room.

The android heads to where it landed, "Respect the Book?," he picks it up, "What's that supposed to mean?"

The phrase repeats indefinitely.

Amelia peers over his shoulder. A constant, quiet buzzing drills into her ears. She sees the echoing phrase, demanding that she respect the book, and something inside her complies. Her eyes rest on its pages more easily; the words appear more enticing.

"Maybe it answers questions?"

"I asked one just now," replies the android, staring down at the Book, trying to find meaning between the lines, "All it says is “Respect the Book.” Over and over and over and–"

"Can I see?"

As soon as it touches her hand, that mute, chalkboard feeling flows into her fingers. The page changes. Letters move about like they would inside the mind of a dyslexic. Paragraphs form on the page as if through falling drops of ink. Something cohesive manifests, the title reads:

_Dhemisht: Nearly the Language of Gods._

"Hey, it changed again," she muses, her eyes glazing over as they focus on the words, the letters, the ink.

"What does it say now?," Henry steps over.

Amy’s intrigued out of her mind, "Look: right here," she points to the title with but a murmur on her breath.

_She feels cloudy._

The curtains thrash in the wind. The temperature seems to have dropped several degrees.

Resting in Amy's hands is a grammar regarding the entire Dhemisht language. She finds it difficult to take her eyes off it. She gives herself a headache straining to look away, but her eyes are still locked onto the page. Amelia finds it impossible to explain it to the android; in fact, _her voice is gone._

The Book rumbles in her hands. Finally, Amy gives in.

_For beginners in interstellar and intergalactic linguistics, Dhemisht grammar is extremely daunting. In fact, it’s daunting even for those who know several languages already. Dhemisht is immensely complex, and requires hours of focus and the memorisation of dozens of forms, conditions, and endings. The reader is urged to be patient in learning, as to call Dhemisht a rewarding language would be an understatement._

Words pass across her mind like a cold sensation seeping through her fingers to her knuckles and wrists. Her hands are stiff, and affixed to the cover.

Henry dims his eyes at Amelia, her own stuck to the page, “Amy? Are you alright?”

She doesn’t answer.

_To prepare the reader for the upcoming lessons, we've laid out a few of the Dhemisht language's rules to give bothe beginners and polyglots an idea of the complexity at hand._

_This bears repeating: Dhemisht requires patience._

The numb sinks into Amy’s elbows. Henry watches her eyes flit through the grammar, forcibly waiting on her response. _Oblivious._ The tips of her fingers are black: an inkèd shade seeping into her wrists. Her eyes glaze with intent, focused on the ink, the black, _the_ _dark_. Amy has no feeling in her arms. Nonetheless, she reads; the Book has her mesmerised to attention.

“Amy?”

Henry stares at the dazed figure. He wanders the room, stopping at the window and nervously clicking his fingers against the sill. A dark speck seems to stain the sky. The wind whistles.

_One important feature to understand about the Dhemisht language is its utilisation of grammatical case. To those who are entering linguistics for the first time, grammatical case is a system by which words are changed to fit the context they are being used in. Dhemisht utilises a system of eight grammatical cases, the lot of which we will explain in depth so that the reader understands before proceeding._

_Of the language’s eight, the first grammatical case is the nominative. Like the word “man” in the phrase, “the man took the ring,” the nominative reflects the subject in a sentence. All nouns start in the nominative case._

_Next is the accusative case, which in the previous phrase represents the word “ring.” Put simply, the accusative reflects the object in a sentence being acted upon. In the case of “the man took the ring,” the ring is accusative. In Dhemisht specifically, the accusative case is formed by attaching the letter /n/ to the end of a noun._

_In a more complex phrase, such as “the man gave the woman the ring,” a third grammatical case is used: the dative. The dative case in the above phrase represents the word “woman,” reflecting the object in a sentence being acted upon indirectly. Similar to the accusative, the dative case in Dhemisht is formed by attaching the letter /m/ to the end of a noun._

Amelia's skin begins to coat at the neck and arms in frost. A viscous black fluid flows past her wrists and drips onto the floor. The Book emits a noise that grinds their teeth, and Amy kneels by the bookshelf with her eyes still locked firmly onto its pages. Wearing frost like a second skin, she mumbles words under her breath present neither in the text nor the English language.

_Her eyes look like glass._

She curls over the Book and caresses it in her hands, leaning against the bookshelf, helpless. Curiosity fills her pupils like wine fills a glass, and like wine, it’s intoxicating. Knowledge beyond the grammar seeps into her head through her eyes and ears. The Book purrs.

_By attaching the letter /t/ to the end of a noun, or by including the word “të” to the sentence before a noun or pronoun, the genitive case is formed. The genitive represents grammatical possession, specifically reflecting the object in a sentence which owns a noun in the nominative case. In this case, the word “man” in “the man’s ring” is genitive; the man owns the ring._

_The instrumental-comitative case, coming after the genitive, in essence replaces the word “with.” The case reflects the object in a sentence being used or cooperated with. In bothe phrases, “the man hit his hand with a hammer” and “the man went home with his wife,” the instrumental-comitative case is used. Dhemisht forms the case by attaching the letter /j/ to the end of a noun along with its gender-specific coda. Grammatical gender will be explained in a later chapter._

_The ablative, allative, and terminative cases are often grouped together due to their related functions. The ablative case reflects the object in a sentence being moved away from: the word “house” in “the man walked away from the house.” The allative case opposes the ablative, instead replacing the word “towards” and representing “house” in the phrase “the man walked towards the house.” Finally, the terminative case represents the object the subject stops at; for example, “the man walked to the house,” where “house” is terminative._

_The formation of the last three cases will also be explained in a later chapter._

Fear steals the light from Henry’s eyes. Amy can do nothing but hold the Book in front of her face. Gibberish expressions spill from her lips like ink from her arms. Her fingertips crackle, her arms submerged, shimmering with horrible black. Henry paces the room muttering lines and lines of panic until a terrible idea worms into his head. The android seeks to pry the Book from Amy’s grip.

_Another important feature of the Dhemisht language is mood and connotation. Without either, a speaker may be misunderstood, and in extreme cases, their speech can be taken as an insult._

_Mood comes in two varieties, realis and irrealis. The former describes, the latter speculates. Phrases in the realis mood, such as “the ring is white” or “the book is divine,” express objective truths. Irrealis statements, such as “were she able to talk” and “she would scream” can express a range of functions, such as hopes and wishes, doubt, necessity, surprise, conditionality, or speculation._

Consciousness becomes a memory in the back of Amy’s mind as she falls limp to the hardwood. Her arms are dark, her whole body paralysed. The Book holds tight to the tips of her fingers wearing frost upon its cover. It’s cackling. Amy’s pupils dilate until ink replaces the whites in her eyes. Her voice strains breathless nothing, reciting mindless poetry.

_Connotation is especially important, and alongside case and mood brings the most complexity to the Dhemisht language._

_Connotation is expressed through suffixes, prefixes, and infixes which are most often attached to nouns. Each one expresses a different notion. Some express positive qualities, such as the connotational suffix “-dje” or the diminutive suffix “-ija.” Others express distaste or resentment, such as negative “-se.” More often than not, however, connotation is utilised to widen the language’s range of description. Various connotations are expressed through affixation such as the suffix “-cak,” meaning “the colour or emotion of…,” the affix “di,” meaning “of the self,” suffix “-men,” which refers to a town or location, or “-uba,” which refers to the colour white specifically._

The Book groans like a mute brass, within Henry’s mind planting a seed of doubt.

_The android needs a miracle._

Amy's eyes are no longer a window to the soul but a door to the universe. Henry struggles to pry the Book from her grasp. It roars like a laughing motor. Information spills into Amy's mind faster than it can comprehend. Unimaginable secrets of existence drive themselves deep into her head as the android nearly throttles her in hopes of pulling her from the Book's influence.

_Though the Dhemisht language is difficult, we assure the reader will learn. With patience and determination, with focus and memorisation, Dhemisht is learnable. Once the reader becomes fluent, we assure they will be rewarded._

The ink stains beneath Amy’s shirt; her skin cracks and shutters. Henry pulls to his limits until, finally, the Book comes loose. His heart rattles as the blackened skin from Amy's fingers peels back, frostbitten. Henry slams backwards into the coffee table, Book in hand.

The doors in Amy’s eyes crack shut; knowledge slips away. She wakes with a harsh breath to find herself covered in ink. The text echoes for chapters and chapters, "Respect the Book." Henry’s hands are coated in frost. Amy trembles, within minutes regaining the ability to move, but none of the will. She waits as the ink running down her arms disappears to nothing, as the cracks rippling across her skin stitch together. Her breath is shallow. She takes in short gasps staring wide-eyed at her hands, trying and failing to comprehend what happened.

The wind picks up.

Amy finds herself once again in control. Her skin crawls. In Henry's hands, the Book emits a beckoning noise like that of ancient bones creaking. Amelia scoots back as far as possible. She presses her spine against the bookshelf.

"Get rid of it.”

Henry turns around, "Get rid of what?"

It takes all her strength to cry, "The Book! Get rid of the Book!," she rasps, "I don't– I don't want that– that _thing_ near me."

Henry steps toward the window and jams his arms into the open air. Just as he's about to drop the Book, he catches a glimpse of something shining in the sky. He lets the tome plummet onto the crosswalk below. Once he hears it slap the pavement, Henry steps away, satisfied.

Amy breathes a weak sigh of relief: a feeling which dissolves the instant she looks up. On the coffee table between the couch and her bed lays the Book, unscathed. Amelia shrieks and falls back. Her head strikes wood. A dark gaze floods over the calculating leather cover; Henry’s eyes dim with intrigue. He grabs the Book and opens it to a random page.

 _"Only the organic may read,”_ it smiles.

Henry tears it in half. Jagged bits of paper sprinkle like feathers alongside the split cover. Receiving the android’s shock, the Book binds itself, releasing a noise like the wheezing before a spell of laughter. He reclaims the tome and runs his finger through it. "Respect the Book" prints between drips and streaks of ink, written for reams as if having a seizure with a quill in hand. He identifies a sink across the apartment and places the Book under a stream of water. The river above falls black to the drain. As if by coincidence, the faucet stops flowing. Still held between Henry's cautious fingers, the Book heats up. It boils the water drenching its pages as well as the few drops upon Henry's hands.

 _"Dry again,"_ it snickers; what a pun.

The android too starts steaming. Amy is forced to watch as he raids her kitchen for a weapon. While Henry’s busy lighting a match, the sound of footsteps rings louder and louder. They begin outdoors, from the end of the hall. They walk to the apartment. They stop. The lock blinds white. A similar coloured noise leads up to a deafening thud as the door is nearly kicked off its hinges.

There’s a woman now standing under the doorframe. She’s too tall to fit. Wearing an expression simultaneously horrified and enraged, she scans the apartment. Her eyes are red, the kind of hapless crimson that spills from a vast wound in someone’s stomach. The voice of old age seems to whisper behind that livid scarlet despite the woman looking comfortably thirty.

Black wisps of smoke dance between her fingers; even across the room, the odour burns Amy’s nose. The woman’s hand is scarred. Embedded in her left palm is a small device, roughly the shape of a teardrop whose tail has been stretched to her wrist. 

It’s glowing; it’s audibly warm.


	3. Blood Red and Pitch Black

The woman steps under the doorframe. 

She pores over the room, her head nearly skimming the ceiling. The hue painting her eyes shifts. She frowns, her iris now yellow and bright pink, and in a few long paces happens upon the android. Henry looks up at her holding a match burnt to his fingernails and a Book trying to the bottom of its lungs not to laugh. He glances at fragments of the door handle which litter the ground. The circuits in his head whisper to him every way the woman could reuse his parts.

_ "Kar ves dio?," _ she snaps, carrying in her voice such a wedge as to split moments in half,  _ “Ka ves terramje ai?” _

Henry struggles to pull words to an answer,  _ “Sha tyre je– ka’dje vmaun Ami,” _ he raises the Book,  _ “Bë keo më faskra’dje varu myrten t’io, na–” _

The woman snaps,  _ “Aupopilje? Tjauke kuriatom! Dhes sha edues maru më tyrëm’dje arsha!” _

_ “Hila, io dhei sha, na ky--” _

_ “Ky ka?,”  _ Hila severs Henry mid-connotation,  _ “Ky’verethë? Më ky’helmë tyre ai? Kje dio ky’shei rukuriarë!” _

Moments grow painful with silence.

The woman spots the remnants of a pair of khakis clinging to Henry’s exposed electronics. Her eyes take on a violent red. She glances past the android; the rust in her gaze startles Amy to her feet.

_ “Ai,”  _ she gestures,  _ “Vilë ka më dera dio vmaun të keo je?” _

Amelia snaps to attention. As the android replies, she finds herself growing more aware of the language and its meanings.  _ “Keo” _ refers to her;  _ “vmau” _ is a name. Words and context engulf her buzzing mind, and as the two converse, Amelia listens despite their dialogue falling on deaf ears.

_ Knowledge is addicting. _

Just as the fumes begin fading from between Hila’s fingers, her palm glows. A thick, pitch-like material engulfs her hand and the light therefrom. The amalgam flattens to a thin disc which ripples like water, and holds its shape as if held together by willpower alone. Henry shifts his weight; he watches the woman’s fingers disturb the strands of smoke writhing overhead.

_ “Tani në serdëtom sheshakë ashike, na s’edui sheshë kërkene,”  _ she fumes,  _ “Ramë serdët vilë tani je kje kanshës dio dardhëntom _ .”

The tablet appears not to be functioning.

Henry notes the woman’s contorting expression and remarks,  _ “S’je rejall, Hila; edues drese sha ktu,” _ he moves to set the Book onto the coffee table, from which Amy backs away.

Hila proceeds to punch the ceiling.

_ “Ka bes deo?,”  _ Henry flinches,  _ “Ai ydall ja? Ha së dhes sha s’jau kje Tehk?,”  _ he stares up at the woman as angrily as he can.

However, if looks could kill, Hila’s would do so slowly. She finds the amalgam functions no better after attempting in vain to raise it over her head. It changes form as she jams it into her pocket.

Hila eclipses the android. She strains her voice to the last syllable and it cracks like the thin ice she has Henry standing upon. Every word slurs into the next; with every pause her pupils seem to bleed. The abundance of red pigment burns as if to match her temper. Hila drags her hair into fists over her face, her voice tearing within her throat. A stream of colour runs down her cheek.

"Amy!,” snaps the android, “Take her to the faucet! Quickly! Come on!"

_ Short tempers are painful. _

Amelia flinches; it takes her a second to realise she was spoken English to. Moving as if she had a dead fish tied to her wrist, she takes Hila’s arm and drags her into the kitchen. A steady stream runs from the tap. Amy cups her hands full of water and carries them a full arm’s length to Hila’s face.

She shoves Amelia out of her way of the sink and splashes herself with several handfuls more.

White-eyed, Hila leaves the sink and wanders through Amy’s kitchen. Amelia watches the stranger open a cupboard and pass over the cups to a stack of small bowls. Hila fills a dish under the still-running tap and takes a long swig of water to calm her nerves.

Turning around, Hila nearly butts heads with the human, or rather the human nearly ends up nose-deep in her chest. Greyish yellow crosses her eyes for a moment before returning to Henry.

She stands over the insufferable android, instinctively scratching the metal bridge in her wrist,  _ "Ai,"  _ she mutters,  _ “Arkandodhë kje myrten të dio, pra? Ves më vera atom shtu?” _

Amelia understands individual words as they fall upon her ears. She puts them together in her head: "Right, what happened with your legs, then? You repaired everything right here?"

Like water down the drain, her comprehension fizzles away. She shuts off the faucet; the red has left a series of spattered rings along the bottom of the sink. Amelia’s pupils dilate, her head aches as she stumbles by the edge of digging her chin into the floor at Henry’s feet.

_ Knowledge is addicting. _

As if he were building a response from broken syllables, Henry answers, _ "Bei tja yrallka në kymeni. Aftë ka pijshtim ai kria fushje fvil sha turuni namjamec. Terranëdje më pijshem n’akje; bei pfaja ushan ai na më ra myrteta. Pra myrte bë reisha." _

Amelia catches faint translations for “water,” "brown kernel," and "fell" within a soup of grammar.

Every word bar a few slips from Amy's grasp. Shattered pieces remain of a language whose description of reality fits nothing she’s ever heard. Dhemisht is a tongue rebuilt for beauty. Its poetry and its short stories capture multiple worlds at once. Epics and novels and grand projects swell from the deepest trenches of creativity, no longer limited by words. Its speakers are known for deriving subtle expressions from profound nonsense.

Dhemisht was built to innovate perception.

For conversational purposes, Henry has downloaded two separate languages, one of them being International English.

Hila, on the other hand, doesn’t understand a lick of anything beside her mother tongue. Her native language is a colloquial dialect of Dhemisht spoken in southern Bara, her birthplace on Tehk.

Bara is landlocked, nestled between three other countries and in a perpetual disagreement with at least two at a time. Hila's hometown is somewhere on the country's tail, disconnected from the motherland and surrounded on all sides by the territory of another country, one whose name, “Dhemen,” means “fortress on the river.” The southern border of Bara is drawn by a narrow river which empties into a large pond, locally known as Kali Jero: “the Red Lake.” The body is surrounded by banks of pure white sand, making it from above look like a bullet wound. Kali Jero itself is coloured crimson by a deposit of iron sitting at the bottom. Its inhabitants breathe rust.

A smallish town called Kalimen, or "Lakefort," surrounds the ferrous body and meanders along the river feeding it.

_ We’re getting off topic. _

Hila steps away,  _ “Aujershei malmaj,” _ she spits.

Her eyes swirl grey and yellow as she wanders past Amelia to the window. She leans against the sill awhile, staring onto the New York skyline. Her slender figure behind the curtains is but a silhouette. She gazes over the unfamiliar horizon, broken off by concrete jungle to either side. The window’s still open; the wind thrashes about like one would crack a whip.

Amelia approaches Henry with a question, "Is that the person you lied to me about? The one with the annoying voice?"

"Yes– well, not  _ that _ annoying," the android replies, "her name’s Hila."

She echoes, " "Ee-la?" "

Henry wanders through Amy's apartment as if he owned it, "It means “tomorrow,” " he steps into the kitchen and rummages around.

"What are you doing?"

Henry ignores her question to make room for his own, "Where do you keep your food?"

"What do you need food for?" Amy follows him into the kitchen, watching him open cupboard after cupboard without closing a single one afterwards, "You don't eat, don't you?"

Henry gestures toward the tehk, who has looped around behind the coffee table, "Listen, Hila travelled a long way to get here," he happens upon the fridge and stares into it for a morsel, “Have some hospitality.”

The acrylic drawers in which Amelia keeps her fruit clatter against the inner wall. Henry grabs an apple and neglects to shut the fridge behind him, “Do you think this would be safe for Hila to eat?,” he asks.

Amelia chases common sense with her voice, which seems to warp as she argues, “How am I supposed to know that?!”

“Fair point,” the android replies; he turns his attention to the tehk, now sitting on Amy’s sofa as if she’d known her for years,  _ "Hila, huques’dje mal shinë terranisht? Je ai mushe, shëqereseja!" _

She stands up and paces about the coffee table, stopping at Henry’s outstretched arm just a few steps into her trek. Hila glances at the fruit. It stares back at her with an angry, blurred reflection. She hesitates to take it; Hila examines the surface to find herself within, warped by the apple’s curve and colour to a crimson caricature.

_ Colour is important. _

Henry smiles,  _ "S’je helmë," _ his laugh brightens Hila’s expression.

_ “Keja, pra,” _ the tehk replies.

She palms the taboo-coloured fruit and gives it a taste. Her eyes spark up in surprise, growing to shine bright amber. Like wildfire, thoughts, more importantly questions, flare through her head. Amber darkens to hazel, and hazel to coffee. Henry, watching her sit down, feels a tap at his shoulder. 

"Ok, why are you here?," demands Amelia, "What are an alien and a robot doing in my apartment?"

“Don’t be rude.”

Amy snaps, "What are you doing in my house?," the neighbours can almost hear her through the walls, “There I was at the café thinking I’d be sacrificing my time to save someone’s  _ life, _ but now I’m stuck with you! At  _ least _ tell me why you’re here; not just here in my living room,  _ here _ here… here  _ Earth  _ here.”

“Calm down, please,” says Henry, decidedly laid back after invading a stranger’s home, “I told you I’d explain later!”

“You told me you’d explain later  _ earlier!,” _ she fumes.

The android attempts to catch his bearings, “Well we sort of met by accident… The plan  _ originally _ was that--”

"There was a  _ plan?!  _ You mean there were steps you had to take to get here?! You mean you had some goal in mind, whatever that was? Are there more of you up there?,” Amelia throws her arm out in a wide gesture, “What was her role? Hila, or whatever her name was-- what was she supposed to do? _ " _

With a tapping at her shoulder, Amelia startles from her dialogue. Hila, looming overhead with half an apple in her hand, gestures toward the Book, her palm glinting in the winterlight.

_ "Ka je sha? Vilë ekuit je?" _

She follows Hila's finger to the coffee table, to where the Book hums, "I– I don’t understand what you mean.”

Her eyes a kind of pinkish yellow, Hila tilts her head a degree at Amy, then looks to Henry for a translation.

_ "Bë dera, “Ou së dhei ka huques deru,” "  _ he interprets.

The Book once again worms its way into Amelia’s head; it sits in her mind a barrier, halting ideas as they pass, whereupon they stand and gape at the strange fallen concept. Hila approaches the coffee table. She examines the Book for a while before opening it to a couple pages written in perfect Dhemisht. Amy’s heart drops. She tears it droning from her grasp, trying not to look at it herself.

Watching Amelia slam the tome shut, Hila returns no reaction, instead asking,  _ "Eu ke leshtin ai në gjuh dhemisht deo?" _

Henry interprets, " "Why do you have a book written in Dhemisht?," she said."

"Written in  _ what?," _ she almost dares to peek inside.

Hila pulls the dark amalgam out of her pocket. Fortunately, she had planned far enough ahead to have pockets in the first place. On the long trip between Tehk and Earth, she had enough time to prepare, rather to refresh her knowledge on humanity. She figured it would be a good idea to wear a t-shirt and jeans in four degree weather (forty degrees Fahrenheit).

She takes the Book and opens it again. Amelia winces away for fear of catching a word or letter and getting caught up in another trance. The tehk reacts differently, however; Hila seems largely unfazed by the Book’s coaxing words.

Putting a different question to mind, she closes and reopens the Book to find it telling a different story than the last. She stares into its pages with an intrigued look in her eyes, one of bright caramel.

_ "Ka ja dou?" _

The only answer the Book is willing to give is, _ "Graufe të deo Kletkytajën:” _

_ Respect the Book. _

Hila mutters a curse under her breath. She shuts the Book and turns to her pitch tablet. The 35, as it’s called, happens to only be the twenty-third edition of its series. 35s are effectively slabs of information. They connect to an endless web of data which weaves through the universe across lightyears of space: the S.I.G.M.A., in English at least. The 35's vantablack surface can take any shape and carry out any function; at the moment, Hila's attempting to pull up a search engine.

She receives no results after minutes of waiting. Henry trails close behind her as she wanders the apartment for a specific spot that isn’t dead. The tehk stops, having remembered that it slipped her mind: there’s no signal. Current legislature regarding Earth and the human condition actually forbids any use of the S.I.G.M.A. while within terrestrial borders. To make sure of that, all signals are signaled away from the blue planet, much to Hila's misfortune.

She turns and gestures to Henry and Amelia,  _ "Hejde të dha, dhou ves,"  _ she demands.

"What?," Amy looks to the android for interpretation.

Henry, slipping between the coffee table and the sofa, interprets with a rushed tongue, "She wants us to come with her."

“Why would I–”

_ “Do you want me to get rid of the Book or not?” _

Without a second or third thought, yet hesitating a fourth and fifth, Amy gathers the Book and her bag, leaving the laptop behind on the sofa.

_ Humans are never in their right mind. _

The two follow Hila as she exits the apartment. Down the four flights of stairs, they end up in the lobby, small and unlobbylike. The building itself hasn't aged well, management keeps swapping hands with no time in between for housekeeping. Hugging the papered walls is furniture old and new. The three push out the door. Amy, passing through the building’s security measures, wonders how Hila got through without a code.

_ Probably that metal teardrop again. _

Hila’s stride takes her a fair distance every step, making her a pain to keep up. She turns the 35 in her hands and pulls up a small window, depicting a rough map of New York. Two red points prick the surface to represent her and her destination. As they beep closer, the winter bites less with cold than it does with warmth. The snow on the curb fades to sound like water trickling down a drain; the twin crimson dots converge into one as the three happen upon a narrow alleyway.

They head into the corridor. Beads of sweat form over Amy's forehead; she feels the need to take off her jacket. Something beyond the graffiti and the roar of air conditioning has a presence here. The alley, despite it appearing empty, feels crowded. There’s a breathing at her next Amy can’t explain. Something has slipped just under her consciousness, to a level under the floor Amelia can feel rumbling beneath, but never understand.

Hila steps forward wearing an indifferent expression; her 35 transmutes itself into a thin remote.

Mental cloaking is a process in which objects are hidden by removing the notion that an object could be hiding there in the first place. Much like making it somebody else’s problem, the process consumes gallons of processing power, thus creating a lot of heat.

Objects lost through mental cloaking can only be found if something seems off about the situation they’re hiding in.

For example: a door with no frame.

Amy stares into the floating entryway with about the expected amount of surprise. The opening seems to hover a few feet above the ground, angled in a way that makes it appear attached to something much larger. Amy's senses come to acknowledge the dark metallic structure looming overhead.

Taking up the alleyway is a massive spacecraft bent into the shape of a ring. The vessel crowds the space with little left to spare.

_ It’s larger than anyone can wear on a finger, that’s for sure. _

The tehk are best known for their ringships: the kind of spacecraft that can be confused for flying saucers when viewed side-on. UFO sightings, when they aren’t the result of American spy planes, often involve ringships. It’s furiously debated whether the tehk should be fined for these fly-bys. However, flying saucers are such an uncreative excuse on humanity’s part that it’s unlikely they’d figure things out soon. Not to mention, if tehk did use flying saucers, the flat top would reflect starlight directly into someone’s eye, leaving not only the guarantee that there  _ is _ life outside the solar system, but an expensive lawsuit for the aliens to deal with as soon as humanity learns how to complain to them.

Hila climbs into the ringship, her palm clattering metal against metal, landing in a direction that makes no sense. Dazed, Amy rubs her eyes as if to wipe away whatever misinformation could be tinting them.

Fortunately, there was never any LCD in her coffee.

Henry climbs in with Hila; he stands on his side by hers, coaxing Amy to come aboard as well. Amelia retrieves her grounded jawline and steps up to the sweltering structure. The heat it gives off sticks to Amy's shirt, clinging onto her back and darkening her clothes. With a neglected moment to reconsider, she climbs the scorched, black metal into the ship itself.

Her hands sting.

The change in direction trips her to the floor. Out the hatch she sees a new vision of Earth: the world tipped to its side as if whoever runs the place had a bit too much to drink. The door closes behind her, leaving but a small window through which she can see home.

Breathtaken, she mutters,  _ "I can't wait to write about this." _


	4. Blue Shift

Getting the human inside is the easy part.

Amy watches Hila pace about the room’s circumference, disappearing around the corner to pilot her vessel. She has yet to realise what a glaring mistake she’s made, the weight of her actions imperceptibly large. The ship’s low roar snaps her from her starstrike. Her weight shifts. Around the corner, Hila raises the ringship by invisible handles. She narrowly avoids scraping a long gash into the neighbouring apartment building: another lawsuit, had humanity the capacity to approach the culprits. Amelia’s stomach falls behind the vessel as it rises; she watches the world right itself and shrink away through the small window in the door.

"You didn't say we'd be going to space!," she cries.

"You followed two extraterrestrials into a dark alleyway. How did you _not_ expect us to take you to space?," the android replies.

"Stop! Get me down!"

 _"Relax,"_ Henry snaps, "We'll let you off as soon as we figure out how to get rid of the Book. I already know there’s no way on Earth we’re doing it.”

Amelia clenches into a ball on the floor.

"Alright, I'll be around the corner if you need me," he says, and leaves her alone at the exit.

A warm breeze swirls over Manhattan. The ringship ascends through clouds people swear didn’t exist just a minute ago. Amelia’s ears fill in the changing pressure and the door releases a sharp hiss, which startles her to her feet. She drives herself to wander out of reach of the window, around the corner Henry was talking about. Over the bend, Amelia sees the two bent over a vast dashboard whose surface ripples like a pool of water:

_A liquid computer._

Hila pulls the 35 out of her pocket; she drops it onto the dashboard and watches with an absent eye as it melts into threads of ink. Amy’s stomach churns. Her mind wanders back to the Book, to the cold, to the black.

The Book, as if reacting to mention, emits a noise similar to that of rending the wings of a plane. Its droning captures the attention of pilot and co-pilot alike, who turn to see their wary guest cowering with indecision.

Henry gestures at the Book’s spine sticking up from her bag, "Let me see that," he says.

Amelia hands it over; the buzzing in her fingers quickly fades. Points of ink spit up from the screen as Henry drops the Book into the dashboard. The liquid’s surface bends to the volume and forms a tight slot around it. In an instant, clouds of information surge from the computer, telling all they can about the strange new thing they find at their doorstep.

As they rise farther, New York begins more and more to look like a speck among a sea of identical stains cascading Earth’s soiled face.

The ringship ascends beyond the Armstrong line, eleven miles up.

Hila finds a connection here: in the same place blood boils. She pulls the thread tying her to the S.I.G.M.A., weaving a tighter band between it and her ship. Amelia peers over Henry's shoulder. The guest finds herself mesmerised by strands of light dancing around Hila’s fingers.

She pulls her attention elsewhere. As she wanders the ringship deck, Amelia’s shadow curls and frays along the wall. Embedded in the ceiling are a halo of lights which, as the ringship moves, illuminate varying sections of the interior. This creates a canopy of shifting radiance which breathes like firelight. Shadows appear to bend in unnatural ways only possible under the corrosion of physical laws. The floor with each step seems to push and pull at a whim. Amelia feels dizzy. Her eyes wander the colourful interior; they seem to level themselves with every minor adjustment the vessel makes as it moves.

Its interior forms a continuous loop around a section of the universe where cosmic rules are ignored. Amelia feels a consistent humming from the vessel’s inner wall. Because ringships are known to rend themselves to pieces, support beams encircle the room at even spacing. Between them lie shelves and furniture of all comforting kind.

"Henry?," Amelia feels uncomfortable calling an android Henry, "Why aren't there any windows?"

The android pokes his head over the curve, "Is the one on the door too small for you?," he smirks.

With a tap or two of a finger, the wall becomes transparent, letting Amelia witness the Earth below. She watches continents pass over a new horizon. The ocean floats across and gives way to nation after nation, borders proving themselves imaginary, and meaningless. A mild and existential surreality fills her head; her world is insignificant like dust at her feet, her home is an irrelevant point behind the words of a map.

For now, she doesn't mind being abducted by aliens.

"Amy!," Henry frowns at concerning results scrawling the dashboard, "I found something!"

She rushes between them and looks over the screen. She can’t taste a lick of English, just unnatural, blocky markings.

Amy replies, “What does it say?”

As if to answer her question, Henry plunges his fist into the computer. Millions of nanomachines drip up his arm to pierce his artificial skin. The dashboard pings like a drop of water. _Henry is connected._ He aids the computer in translating the text and carves a piece for Amy to read:

_On the Nature of Information:_ _  
  
_

_[...]_

_The Book of All is a sapient object, currently known to contain_ ████ █████████ _, which takes the shape of a black leather-bound book with the symbol ∞ inscribed in gold on its front cover. The text displays basic self-awareness and the ability to predict what a subject wishes to read upon opening it._

_The Book seems to prefer individuals that_ █████████████ ████████████. ███████████████ ███████████, _as well as skilled musicians and writers._

_When it locates a suitable candidate, the Book of All_ ████████ █████████████ _. Should the individual choose to read from the Book of All, they will find that_ ████████ _occurs within a span of_ ████████ _. Cause of death varies and includes_ ██████ █████████████████ _._

_Individuals who have been chosen by the Book of All as suitable candidates are_ ███████ _, and unable to destroy it by any means._ ██████ ███████████████ _“lose hope and give up.”_

The screen flashes white. The Book emits a deafening roar as if imitating an audience of laughter.

_I see opportunities everywhere._

Amelia’s stomach churns. Her knees dissolve. The world as it spins pulls her off balance and she falls into the dashboard, throwing her hands as if to stop herself hitting the ground. The computer gives beneath her weight. Her heart sinks with her body into the black; the featureless interface consumes her like a vat of ink. Quintillions of nanomachines shock to her arrival, each imperceptible cog part of a liquid clockwork whose time is incomprehensible to tell. Uncountably many calculations encroach upon Amelia’s nervous system. Her heart jolts in pitch dark as her thoughts sputter and stroke; her voice seems to cut away. She gasps to cry again in desperation and her lungs fill. She coughs violently, bubbling the viscous ink. The only light that exists is that of her life flashing before her eyes. Amy writhes in a vain attempt to free herself. The ink only seems to press tighter.

_Beware of curiosity._

A crowd of hands grips Amy by her arms and legs. Her struggle stops. Amelia feels her weight shift; a sudden brightness stings her eyes.

Hila and Henry drag her onto a guest cot around the corner. They set her down and look desperately for signs of life. Amelia hangs over the mattress. Spindly tendrils of computer spill from her mouth among drops of blood.

She shudders under a crushing metaphoric weight, hunched into a ball upon the bed. Hila sits down and tries to comfort her with a thin blanket and words lost in translation.

Henry kneels in front of her, "Amy… Amy," she looks absent, "What happened? Are you alright?"

Tears prick her eyes; her throat swells with an experience she can’t express in words. Amelia hugs her knees. She can still feel little sparks bounce up and down her spine. She can still feel her fingers twitch with every calculation the computer makes. A mind other than her own seems to bleach the words off her tongue, and any attempt she makes to think halts a wit short of coherent. 

Henry steps away. He and Hila approach the dashboard. They find themselves reluctant to touch it, though they do. _Someone has to drive._ The android steps forward and ushers Hila away. He submerges his hands in the liquid; it crawls up his arms to his shoulders, across his chest, and his legs.

From head to toe, Henry’s skin is covered in a layer of nanomachines a millimetre thick. Amy listens to the sharp whirring and dares a peek around the contour to watch Henry’s skin peel. Artificial muscle dissolves to make way for plastic components, and the only earthly features that remain are his clothing. The android’s new body is glossy and grey, warm like a summer downpour. He still retains his human proportions. His arms are now blocky and curved toward his wrists and delicate hands. Peering through uncovered joints are wires and tubes of liquid coolant, rhythmically pulsing like veins. The android stares over the dashboard. His face is minimal; stony features represent a nose, cheeks, a chin…

_It’s a shame he doesn’t have ears._

Revealing a bare plate below his waist and his legs below that, Henry removes his pants. He sees no reason in keeping them on as, no thanks to the knife, there are two long slashes going down either leg.

Hila wanders about the chamber. The voices in her head whisper amongst and against one another

By human standards, tehk are clinically insane. They can carry up to six or seven trains of thought at a time, simultaneously agreeing and disagreeing with each other as they alongside think. Hila paces undecidedly by Amy’s cot; she finds her lying under a thin cover. Amelia hears a few taps against the wall just above her. As the lights dim, she feels an extra blanket drape her body.

_Colour is important._

Slowly, thoughtlessly, Amelia begins to settle. Short glimpses of her childhood play for a moment as she nods off. The night otherwise dreams nothing.

_Sweet, senseless nothing._

Henry leans hunched over the dashboard with his lifeless eyes focused into its light. Harsh strands of silver slice the dull contours of his face, leaving him the appearance of isolation in the void.

The lights are shut off in a nightly manner. Hila lays in a small guest cot by Amelia’s. Her feet peek over the foot of her bed as a half dozen voices whisper stories to each other to pass the night.

The tehk stirs in her shallow sleep, her mind a wreck of clamouring trains of thought. Amy, on the other bed, lies in a mess under her covers, sleeping comfortably looking like she fell from her apartment window.

Apart from the occasional shift, there’s only silence. Henry can hear the warmth pressing against microphones where his ears should be, but overall there’s nothing. The android groans staring into the sea of information before him, wading through reams of absent writing echoing the same vast emptiness. Henry can find nothing, not a single word let alone a sentence. The entire bustling internet seems to have gone radio silent regarding the Book of All. The sum of information the universe has collected for centuries has nothing. Henry groans again as if making noise will solve his problem. _He half expects it to echo._ The android reevaluates the writing he had shown Amelia; anything useful seems to have been expunged.

_Beware of curiosity._

The Book drones, still slotted into the computer and still waiting for Amy to wake. Henry steals a glance. Frigid air spills from its pages, furtively biting the tips of his fingers. He hesitates to grab the Book. It buzzes in his hands, its pages bite his fingers.

 _"For the organic’s hands only,"_ it reads.

Artificial lungs breathe a defeated sigh. The android paces the room in search of another idea, returns empty-headed, and yet again pores over the computer. He allows the pool of ink to wrap around his fingers and controls the ship as if it were a puppet, manipulating fine threads with sleight and subtle movements. The ringship emits a low rumble as it pulls farther from the Earth. Henry makes his way toward the stars; Earth disappears into a smudge by a speck in the midst of an ocean of light. Eventually, even the sun seems to fade, reddening as Henry steers the ringship faster and farther through the universe. The cosmos become a bruise, as if one dragged whoever was responsible for such beauty across the pavement. Toward the ship’s stern, the view turns red, blue towards its bow, bordered by thin streaks of white along a curve of ink. Blurring edges into the ship itself, obscuring the lines between real and not. As Henry’s eyes adjust to the broken speed of light, he works.

Warping is subtle; the ringship behaves more akin to a plate sat atop a tablecloth. When the magician pulls, the plate stays exactly where it is while at the same time moving relative to the cloth. As the android manoeuvres the vessel between fleeting obstacles, the walls purr.

Hila pulls herself from a dream to feel the rumbling around her. In a haze, she paces to the dashboard by Henry. Rubbing the colour from her eyes, she stares blankly over his shoulder.

 _"Ka je’fë sha?,"_ she yawns.

 _"Deo jymtakas,"_ Henry sighs, _"Derasei më deo hila. Ai?"_

Hila mutters agreement, presses her forehead against his, and shuffles back to bed. The android, replicating a flush of emotions, recedes to himself. Quietly, he asks the autopilot to adjust its coordinates as he carves the S.I.G.M.A. for useful information.

He fails to discover a word more than “Infinite, aware, fatal.”

Out of pity, the Book groans and flips itself open.

Henry startles to the page and reads, _"Happy now?"_ His eyes dim. Below the patronising words is a name, a set of coordinates, and a map of waterways: 

_Church of the Answer | 2[[SiO]FeNi+%0]-Gm(0.931m,0.751p,0.948d)26092-VL_

Henry recognises the string of numbers and letters and urges the autopilot, much to its annoyance, to recalculate its route. The warp-speed bruise outside shifts. A grinding noise emerges from the walls in response to this change; Henry cringes for fear of the vessel caving around him.

The android feels a sudden twinge in the back of his skull running down his spine. Instantly he feels sluggish. Henry groans with his distinct lack of an answer, though still dreads his lack of charge. He shuffles by Hila, by Amy, to his cot. He lays in bed and plugs a wire into his arm. Like a hit of caffeine, he lights up. The night looms for hours before him. Henry lays with his eyes open for a while, fascinated by Hila’s and Amy’s breathing. He imagines in vain how it would feel to drown, or to asphyxiate. After a while, Henry becomes uncomfortably aware of his breathing. The sacks of air in his chest inhale in tune to the two organics’ own.

A question falls in his lap as to why he has a set of lungs in the first place. His mind wanders down a slippery slope of further inquiry, " _Why do I think? Why was I built? What is my purpose? Was I meant to exist at all?"_

Eternity spirals unto his existential dispute; he comments on others’ life and his own, about death and where he might expire, about sleep. The latter eventually finds him. As its cold grips caress his circuits, the android sets himself on the past. His eyes dim, then darken; he reveres his memories to pass the night.

-[|]-

The two had only known one another for a short time.

The android and the tehk wandered Kalimen. They joked about, taking turns crackling one another with laughter. As they stepped in time by passing vehicles, the two appeared to be one.

Kalimen was relatively small. Scattered along the banks of the so-called _Dhemë Falltë_ were homes as far as there was timber. The town was a delta, so to speak, an ancient settlement rich with culture founded to exploit the river’s current. Beside meandering roads were all manner of park or plaza, each raised to different heights and tiled in a mosaic of coloured glass. Nature took every space it could. Black grass and brilliant pink flowers sprouted in the sediment below, often seeping between the tiling and shattered bits of road. Dark vines sprawled up the sides of buildings like faint cracks along their flanks. The sky loomed pale orange, the sun a violent shade of crimson.

The two settled in front of a small vendor, their legs overhanging the edge of a mosaic. Their exchange continued, jokes spilling every now and then. Before them loomed Kali Jero, its iron surface oft breaking to reveal creatures which leaped to catch morsels flying over the water.

The tehk inched to fill the gap between them. In that space, a warm feeling swelled. The android wrapped his arm around her, feeling her hearts’ beat through her clothing, then he remembered something.

_"Hila?"_

The tehk raised her head.

 _"Rejë ktu të deo, më karivasei aidje,"_ said the android.

Hila’s hearts skipped. Moments seemed to halt as the couple split. The stride of seconds passed slow beyond them as if paying a toll to proceed. Hila sat impatient for the android’s return. Meanwhile, he had entered the shop behind their perch to redeem a purchase. Hila’s eyes shaded to such a tone of blue as to match the skies of Earth. The android returned holding something behind his back. He sat down. They leaned into one another, pressing their foreheads together. Their noses nearly touched; enamoured smiles beamed across their faces.

 _"Më ahfei deo malmajëkma. Huqju sha eshumi nartoj javtom fvil miratomfë. Më mestuës’me deo?,"_ he muttered.

No words.

Hila took the gift. The box was beautiful.

Excitement bloomed in her eyes. She threw herself to her feet, beaming, dragging the android by his wrist in a direction she’s walked many times before, but never like this. A few seconds being dragged and the android fell, ankles scraping against the road. He pulled himself from Hila’s grasp only to be left several metres behind. The android clambered to his feet.

_“Aje! Hila! Mendë keq!”_

Hila skidded to a stop and turned to see the android pacing to catch up. The two became one once more. Hila’s hearts clamoured, her eyes were bright blue like a sky not her own. Passers-by and passers-through stopped to wonder what could be so exciting as they watched the couple saunter past.

Bara’s jagged horizon peeked through streets and alleyways, flitting by with each pass. The android, built to be an average human height, could hardly keep up with Hila’s stride. Eventually, they happened upon a large complex whose main lobby had a curved glass roof. Panes of coloured glass surrounded the structure as if representing a rainbow of emotions. As the two approached the complex, the android grew wary. People on tehk at the time were still pretty racist, some still are. The android followed close behind Hila as she sauntered the path cutting through the complex’s front garden. He had no room in his head to appreciate the beauty. Blossoms of every conceivable colour grew from black stems between blades of black grass. Reddish trees coiled overhead the grass, decorated with round black leaves, trimmed weekly. They stepped inside to a grand hall of brilliant white and grey beneath a ceiling of glass which let through the entire sky.

Several corridors connected to the hall. Hila took to the leftmost, trailing the android a step behind her.

The trail spilled into a large room with a desk, where several people were signing documents printed upon pinkish paper.

Hila stepped forward, _“T’eo qeramaj vilë eo huqumi vaj mestuë.”_

_Only two?_

The secretary leaned to witness the android trying his best to see over the desk, then back at Hila. He choked on his laughter. Discrimination still ran rampant on Tehk; the elderly were often culprits. Even since global legislation outlawed it decades ago, an android still had a chance of getting scrapped on their way to work or school. _Androids don’t feel._ The android felt uncomfortable standing among dozens of adults with ready opinions cocked to fire at a moment’s notice. _Androids can’t love._ His circuits produced evermore dramatic scenarios of his disassembly while Hila seized from the man’s hands the papers they would sign as two to become one.

 _“Jeni kojtom dhou ktu?,”_ he asked.

Hila twisted a flattened hand by her neck, a sign signifying a negative, _“Veq ves,”_ she sang.

_Couples are strange here._

The android signed first, craning his neck and arm over the desk. He scratched four letters onto the page in controlled handwriting. Hila signed next. Another burst of excitement swelled up her spine and throat. She dragged her signature down the paper in sweeping arcs and swirls.

That was it.

As they walked down the corridor nearing the exit, Hila felt her wrist vibrate. She examined the teardrop device embedded there to find text scrawling down her arm: an invitation, bring a friend!

Hila had been majoring in xenobiology for decades, studying for what felt like centuries to understand the mechanisms behind humanity.

There she stood by the door, eyes already blue with excitement, getting bluer. She read her arm down to her elbow, and up and down again. Her hearts could have burst right here.

_She was to direct First Contact._

-[|]-

Amelia wakes with a harsh breath. Pins and needles cascade her body. She sits up with eyes coated in sleep to find a whining in her ears. What little she can feel is cold and wet. The air drones with an uncomfortable warmth, only intensifying the bitter blood reeling down her neck. Amelia’s ears squeal to themselves, hearing nothing but the veins in her head, pushing more and more fluid through their narrow channels. She looms in dread, hung motionless over the cot with her eyes fixed.

_Three rings._

The Book of All glows before her. Thin, auric tendrils pulse from a central lemniscate, stretching far beyond the edges of its cover. Her fingers wet with blood, she stares blindly at the Book. Amelia finds herself surrounded by axons of gold humming in the pitch dark. The air buzzes like a thought; voices whisper into her blooded ears, _"Open it, open it, open it, open it…"_ Her hand drags forward against her volition, itching to touch the writhing cover. Amelia snaps into a sense of awareness and jerks back. Her teeth grind in the Book’s droning, bright wires push themselves under her skin. She shrieks; golden neurons replace her own. Amelia becomes excruciatingly aware her movements aren’t hers any longer, struggling against the force driving her to the Book. Her voice fails.

She throws herself awake.

Hila brightens the lights. The two sit by with caution. Amy looks around and gets hung on the Book lying just inches by her side. She knocks it onto the floor. Hila’s eyes pierce pink as they follow the tears rolling down Amelia’s cheeks. Henry wraps his arm around her. The embrace extends in Hila’s direction and the three huddle into one shivering mass. Pulling away from their warmth, Amy grazes her hand along the side of her head.

It returns clean.

As dim turns dawn around him, Henry implores, "What happened? Are you alright?"

Amy slurs her words trying to explain through tears the distilled terror she felt through the night. Henry places a hand on her shoulder and forms an understanding expression. He ushers to the dashboard, looking back each reluctant step. Hila remains. Amelia shudders while the nightmare stammers in her mind, holding herself steady of the urge to sob like a small child.

Hila never expected First Contact to be such a disaster.

Leaving Tehk’s atmosphere, she had been pulled over for lack of proper vehicle registration. _Damned sleazy rentals._ Hila was brought back to the surface not only to do her paperwork but to receive the diplomatic records she’d neglected in her rush to leave. On her trek to Earth, she had missed a digit while copying the coordinates and found a completely inhospitable world fifty-seven lightyears off course. Even when she found the right planet, Hila wasn’t going to be the first to step off. Countless androids were to gather more information, Henry being one of a more important team assigned to gauge the situation at their planned landing sites. Not even _that plan_ blew over before Henry damaged his legs and the tehk surfaced to handle it.

Now, Hila has to deal with a single human on the verge of tears while coasting many parsecs per second from its home world.

Though the bright side says she’s famous, it’s all for the wrong reasons. _At least the mental cloaking worked properly._

Hila had only known humanity through textbooks and lectures. The human gradually sobers, wiping tears that never fell and blood she never drew. Amelia watches the tehk’s eyes fade to grey, captivated. Hila shrinks under the gaze as her own changes again to a rich lavender.

Amelia gestures at the colour, but before she can speak, the tehk seizes her hand in fascination. Shades of wonder stain her eyes. The human startles to the realisation that her grip is stronger than she’d expected. Hila examines her first live specimen, studying what she had on Tehk only studied from rough diagrams and blurry pictures. Five fingers seems too few. With her hands of six, Hila feels every bit she’s learned the terms for. Amelia can do nothing but wait.

With a glance at her discomforted expression, Hila’s eyes flush violet and she jerks away. Apologies fall on deaf ears.

The two feel their weight shift. An atmosphere catches the vessel, hurtling toward the ground at such a speed as to rattle the walls. Hila stands with just a bare grasp on her balance, Amelia even less so, hardly able to keep herself upright sitting down. The tehk taps for a window and watches a small world in the distance grow less and less distant. Amy gawks at the approaching ground and comes to grips with the fact she most definitely isn’t home.

Looking over the planet, which resembles a moldy orange, she swallows her dread in favour of the opportunity to make history.

_If only she had something to write on._

The walls settle as Henry lands on soft orange. Through the window, his passengers gaze over a vast ocean of sand. A cloudless sky looms muddy blue overhead, the new sun coating a portion of the heavens in piercing white. Sweltering heat seeps through the walls. Beads of sweat prick Amelia’s skin.

"Sorry if you were feeling homesick, Amy," Henry marches to the door holding a 35 and a can of compressed air, "I had to take a little detour."

The door lets in a burst of warm air. Two exit, leaving Amelia to gather her things. She grabs the Book to carry in what was formerly a laptop bag in spite of every intention not to. Around the contour, the heat grows oppressive. Already sweating bullets, she steps under a beating sun and a sudden worry for the soles of her shoes. Henry and Hila kick plumes of orange dust as they trudge through the desert. Over the horizon glows a city of shimmering towers. Rolling her sleeves to expose her shoulders, Amelia runs through shifting, burning sands to catch up.

The two come across a glass highway which extends to either horizon. Amelia finally gains on them, wiping salt from her brow and coughing dust. She looks up to witness the road loom overhead. Henry proceeds to climb its metal supports, Hila and Amy follow. He helps the two onto the platform, their weight now twofold under the planet’s influence.

They continue their trek on solid ground. The mirrored city grows on the horizon, an excruciating mile away.

When they finally arrive, the city greets them with commotion. Shouting rings in their ears. Crowds meander like waves. Roadside vendors singe the air. The sky and the heat and the weight all churn and feel like hell.

Amy wades the crowd. The sun beats down like a club: heavy, and releasing hollow cries from the victim’s head. The city and sky are blinding. Whitish marks streak the sides of skyscrapers paradoxically taller than the tallest on Earth. The citystate sings with voices harsh and small; language of every stress and tone grates the air. Amelia feels twice herself, the gravity here being double Earth’s. The air stings her throat, dry and dusty and full to the brim with questions.

_She’ll find the Answer._

Just beyond

RUNG FOUR

# Blue Shift

Getting the human inside is the easy part.

Amy watches Hila pace about the room’s circumference, disappearing around the corner to pilot her vessel. She has yet to realise what a glaring mistake she’s made, the weight of her actions imperceptibly large. The ship’s low roar snaps her from her starstrike. Her weight shifts. Around the corner, Hila raises the ringship by invisible handles. She narrowly avoids scraping a long gash into the neighbouring apartment building: another lawsuit, had humanity the capacity to approach the culprits. Amelia’s stomach falls behind the vessel as it rises; she watches the world right itself and shrink away through the small window in the door.

"You didn't say we'd be going to space!," she cries.

"You followed two extraterrestrials into a dark alleyway. How did you _not_ expect us to take you to space?," the android replies.

"Stop! Get me down!"

 _"Relax,"_ Henry snaps, "We'll let you off as soon as we figure out how to get rid of the Book. I already know there’s no way on Earth we’re doing it.”

Amelia clenches into a ball on the floor.

"Alright, I'll be around the corner if you need me," he says, and leaves her alone at the exit.

A warm breeze swirls over Manhattan. The ringship ascends through clouds people swear didn’t exist just a minute ago. Amelia’s ears fill in the changing pressure and the door releases a sharp hiss, which startles her to her feet. She drives herself to wander out of reach of the window, around the corner Henry was talking about. Over the bend, Amelia sees the two bent over a vast dashboard whose surface ripples like a pool of water:

_A liquid computer._

Hila pulls the 35 out of her pocket; she drops it onto the dashboard and watches with an absent eye as it melts into threads of ink. Amy’s stomach churns. Her mind wanders back to the Book, to the cold, to the black.

The Book, as if reacting to mention, emits a noise similar to that of rending the wings of a plane. Its droning captures the attention of pilot and co-pilot alike, who turn to see their wary guest cowering with indecision.

Henry gestures at the Book’s spine sticking up from her bag, "Let me see that," he says.

Amelia hands it over; the buzzing in her fingers quickly fades. Points of ink spit up from the screen as Henry drops the Book into the dashboard. The liquid’s surface bends to the volume and forms a tight slot around it. In an instant, clouds of information surge from the computer, telling all they can about the strange new thing they find at their doorstep.

As they rise farther, New York begins more and more to look like a speck among a sea of identical stains cascading Earth’s soiled face.

The ringship ascends beyond the Armstrong line, eleven miles up.

Hila finds a connection here: in the same place blood boils. She pulls the thread tying her to the S.I.G.M.A., weaving a tighter band between it and her ship. Amelia peers over Henry's shoulder. The guest finds herself mesmerised by strands of light dancing around Hila’s fingers.

She pulls her attention elsewhere. As she wanders the ringship deck, Amelia’s shadow curls and frays along the wall. Embedded in the ceiling are a halo of lights which, as the ringship moves, illuminate varying sections of the interior. This creates a canopy of shifting radiance which breathes like firelight. Shadows appear to bend in unnatural ways only possible under the corrosion of physical laws. The floor with each step seems to push and pull at a whim. Amelia feels dizzy. Her eyes wander the colourful interior; they seem to level themselves with every minor adjustment the vessel makes as it moves.

Its interior forms a continuous loop around a section of the universe where cosmic rules are ignored. Amelia feels a consistent humming from the vessel’s inner wall. Because ringships are known to rend themselves to pieces, support beams encircle the room at even spacing. Between them lie shelves and furniture of all comforting kind.

"Henry?," Amelia feels uncomfortable calling an android Henry, "Why aren't there any windows?"

The android pokes his head over the curve, "Is the one on the door too small for you?," he smirks.

With a tap or two of a finger, the wall becomes transparent, letting Amelia witness the Earth below. She watches continents pass over a new horizon. The ocean floats across and gives way to nation after nation, borders proving themselves imaginary, and meaningless. A mild and existential surreality fills her head; her world is insignificant like dust at her feet, her home is an irrelevant point behind the words of a map.

For now, she doesn't mind being abducted by aliens.

"Amy!," Henry frowns at concerning results scrawling the dashboard, "I found something!"

She rushes between them and looks over the screen. She can’t taste a lick of English, just unnatural, blocky markings.

Amy replies, “What does it say?”

As if to answer her question, Henry plunges his fist into the computer. Millions of nanomachines drip up his arm to pierce his artificial skin. The dashboard pings like a drop of water. _Henry is connected._ He aids the computer in translating the text and carves a piece for Amy to read:

_On the Nature of Information:_   
  


_[...]_

_The Book of All is a sapient object, currently known to contain_ ████ █████████ _, which takes the shape of a black leather-bound book with the symbol ∞ inscribed in gold on its front cover. The text displays basic self-awareness and the ability to predict what a subject wishes to read upon opening it._

_The Book seems to prefer individuals that_ █████████████ ████████████. ███████████████ ███████████, _as well as skilled musicians and writers._

_When it locates a suitable candidate, the Book of All_ ████████ █████████████ _. Should the individual choose to read from the Book of All, they will find that_ ████████ _occurs within a span of_ ████████ _. Cause of death varies and includes_ ██████ █████████████████ _._

_Individuals who have been chosen by the Book of All as suitable candidates are_ ███████ _, and unable to destroy it by any means._ ██████ ███████████████ _“lose hope and give up.”_

The screen flashes white. The Book emits a deafening roar as if imitating an audience of laughter.

_I see opportunities everywhere._

Amelia’s stomach churns. Her knees dissolve. The world as it spins pulls her off balance and she falls into the dashboard, throwing her hands as if to stop herself hitting the ground. The computer gives beneath her weight. Her heart sinks with her body into the black; the featureless interface consumes her like a vat of ink. Quintillions of nanomachines shock to her arrival, each imperceptible cog part of a liquid clockwork whose time is incomprehensible to tell. Uncountably many calculations encroach upon Amelia’s nervous system. Her heart jolts in pitch dark as her thoughts sputter and stroke; her voice seems to cut away. She gasps to cry again in desperation and her lungs fill. She coughs violently, bubbling the viscous ink. The only light that exists is that of her life flashing before her eyes. Amy writhes in a vain attempt to free herself. The ink only seems to press tighter.

_Beware of curiosity._

A crowd of hands grips Amy by her arms and legs. Her struggle stops. Amelia feels her weight shift; a sudden brightness stings her eyes.

Hila and Henry drag her onto a guest cot around the corner9. They set her down and look desperately for signs of life. Amelia hangs over the mattress. Spindly tendrils of computer spill from her mouth among drops of blood.

She shudders under a crushing metaphoric weight, hunched into a ball upon the bed. Hila sits down and tries to comfort her with a thin blanket and words lost in translation.

Henry kneels in front of her, "Amy… Amy," she looks absent, "What happened? Are you alright?"

Tears prick her eyes; her throat swells with an experience she can’t express in words. Amelia hugs her knees. She can still feel little sparks bounce up and down her spine. She can still feel her fingers twitch with every calculation the computer makes. A mind other than her own seems to bleach the words off her tongue, and any attempt she makes to think halts a wit short of coherent. 

Henry steps away. He and Hila approach the dashboard. They find themselves reluctant to touch it, though they do. _Someone has to drive._ The android steps forward and ushers Hila away. He submerges his hands in the liquid; it crawls up his arms to his shoulders, across his chest, and his legs.

From head to toe, Henry’s skin is covered in a layer of nanomachines a millimetre thick. Amy listens to the sharp whirring and dares a peek around the contour to watch Henry’s skin peel. Artificial muscle dissolves to make way for plastic components, and the only earthly features that remain are his clothing. The android’s new body is glossy and grey, warm like a summer downpour. He still retains his human proportions. His arms are now blocky and curved toward his wrists and delicate hands. Peering through uncovered joints are wires and tubes of liquid coolant, rhythmically pulsing like veins. The android stares over the dashboard. His face is minimal; stony features represent a nose, cheeks, a chin…

_It’s a shame he doesn’t have ears._

Revealing a bare plate below his waist and his legs below that, Henry removes his pants. He sees no reason in keeping them on as, no thanks to the knife, there are two long slashes going down either leg.

Hila wanders about the chamber. The voices in her head whisper amongst and against one another

By human standards, tehk are clinically insane. They can carry up to six or seven trains of thought at a time, simultaneously agreeing and disagreeing with each other as they alongside think. Hila paces undecidedly by Amy’s cot; she finds her lying under a thin cover. Amelia hears a few taps against the wall just above her. As the lights dim, she feels an extra blanket drape her body.

_Colour is important._

Slowly, thoughtlessly, Amelia begins to settle. Short glimpses of her childhood play for a moment as she nods off. The night otherwise dreams nothing.

_Sweet, senseless nothing._

Henry leans hunched over the dashboard with his lifeless eyes focused into its light. Harsh strands of silver slice the dull contours of his face, leaving him the appearance of isolation in the void.

The lights are shut off in a nightly manner. Hila lays in a small guest cot by Amelia’s. Her feet peek over the foot of her bed as a half dozen voices whisper stories to each other to pass the night.

The tehk stirs in her shallow sleep, her mind a wreck of clamouring trains of thought. Amy, on the other bed, lies in a mess under her covers, sleeping comfortably looking like she fell from her apartment window.

Apart from the occasional shift, there’s only silence. Henry can hear the warmth pressing against microphones where his ears should be, but overall there’s nothing. The android groans staring into the sea of information before him, wading through reams of absent writing echoing the same vast emptiness. Henry can find nothing, not a single word let alone a sentence. The entire bustling internet seems to have gone radio silent regarding the Book of All. The sum of information the universe has collected for centuries has nothing. Henry groans again as if making noise will solve his problem. _He half expects it to echo._ The android reevaluates the writing he had shown Amelia; anything useful seems to have been expunged.

_Beware of curiosity._

The Book drones, still slotted into the computer and still waiting for Amy to wake. Henry steals a glance. Frigid air spills from its pages, furtively biting the tips of his fingers. He hesitates to grab the Book. It buzzes in his hands, its pages bite his fingers.

 _"For the organic’s hands only,"_ it reads.

Artificial lungs breathe a defeated sigh. The android paces the room in search of another idea, returns empty-headed, and yet again pores over the computer. He allows the pool of ink to wrap around his fingers and controls the ship as if it were a puppet, manipulating fine threads with sleight and subtle movements. The ringship emits a low rumble as it pulls farther from the Earth. Henry makes his way toward the stars; Earth disappears into a smudge by a speck in the midst of an ocean of light. Eventually, even the sun seems to fade, reddening as Henry steers the ringship faster and farther through the universe. The cosmos become a bruise, as if one dragged whoever was responsible for such beauty across the pavement. Toward the ship’s stern, the view turns red, blue towards its bow, bordered by thin streaks of white along a curve of ink. Blurring edges into the ship itself, obscuring the lines between real and not. As Henry’s eyes adjust to the broken speed of light, he works.

Warping is subtle; the ringship behaves more akin to a plate sat atop a tablecloth. When the magician pulls, the plate stays exactly where it is while at the same time moving relative to the cloth. As the android manoeuvres the vessel between fleeting obstacles, the walls purr.

Hila pulls herself from a dream to feel the rumbling around her. In a haze, she paces to the dashboard by Henry. Rubbing the colour from her eyes, she stares blankly over his shoulder.

 _"Ka je’fë sha?,"_ she yawns.

 _"Deo jymtakas,"_ Henry sighs, _"Derasei më deo hila. Ai?"_

Hila mutters agreement, presses her forehead against his, and shuffles back to bed. The android, replicating a flush of emotions, recedes to himself. Quietly, he asks the autopilot to adjust its coordinates as he carves the S.I.G.M.A. for useful information.

He fails to discover a word more than “Infinite, aware, fatal.”

Out of pity, the Book groans and flips itself open.

Henry startles to the page and reads, _"Happy now?"_ His eyes dim. Below the patronising words is a name, a set of coordinates, and a map of waterways: 

_Church of the Answer | 2[[SiO]FeNi+%0]-Gm(0.931m,0.751p,0.948d)26092-VL_

Henry recognises the string of numbers and letters and urges the autopilot, much to its annoyance, to recalculate its route. The warp-speed bruise outside shifts. A grinding noise emerges from the walls in response to this change; Henry cringes for fear of the vessel caving around him.

The android feels a sudden twinge in the back of his skull running down his spine. Instantly he feels sluggish. Henry groans with his distinct lack of an answer, though still dreads his lack of charge. He shuffles by Hila, by Amy, to his cot. He lays in bed and plugs a wire into his arm. Like a hit of caffeine, he lights up. The night looms for hours before him. Henry lays with his eyes open for a while, fascinated by Hila’s and Amy’s breathing. He imagines in vain how it would feel to drown, or to asphyxiate. After a while, Henry becomes uncomfortably aware of his breathing. The sacks of air in his chest inhale in tune to the two organics’ own.

A question falls in his lap as to why he has a set of lungs in the first place. His mind wanders down a slippery slope of further inquiry, " _Why do I think? Why was I built? What is my purpose? Was I meant to exist at all?"_

Eternity spirals unto his existential dispute; he comments on others’ life and his own, about death and where he might expire, about sleep. The latter eventually finds him. As its cold grips caress his circuits, the android sets himself on the past. His eyes dim, then darken; he reveres his memories to pass the night.

-[|]-

The two had only known one another for a short time.

The android and the tehk wandered Kalimen. They joked about, taking turns crackling one another with laughter. As they stepped in time by passing vehicles, the two appeared to be one.

Kalimen was relatively small. Scattered along the banks of the so-called _Dhemë Falltë_ were homes as far as there was timber. The town was a delta, so to speak, an ancient settlement rich with culture founded to exploit the river’s current. Beside meandering roads were all manner of park or plaza, each raised to different heights and tiled in a mosaic of coloured glass. Nature took every space it could. Black grass and brilliant pink flowers sprouted in the sediment below, often seeping between the tiling and shattered bits of road. Dark vines sprawled up the sides of buildings like faint cracks along their flanks. The sky loomed pale orange, the sun a violent shade of crimson.

The two settled in front of a small vendor, their legs overhanging the edge of a mosaic. Their exchange continued, jokes spilling every now and then. Before them loomed Kali Jero, its iron surface oft breaking to reveal creatures which leaped to catch morsels flying over the water.

The tehk inched to fill the gap between them. In that space, a warm feeling swelled. The android wrapped his arm around her, feeling her hearts’ beat through her clothing, then he remembered something.

_"Hila?"_

The tehk raised her head.

 _"Rejë ktu të deo, më karivasei aidje,"_ said the android.

Hila’s hearts skipped. Moments seemed to halt as the couple split. The stride of seconds passed slow beyond them as if paying a toll to proceed. Hila sat impatient for the android’s return. Meanwhile, he had entered the shop behind their perch to redeem a purchase. Hila’s eyes shaded to such a tone of blue as to match the skies of Earth. The android returned holding something behind his back. He sat down. They leaned into one another, pressing their foreheads together. Their noses nearly touched; enamoured smiles beamed across their faces.

 _"Më ahfei deo malmajëkma. Huqju sha eshumi nartoj javtom fvil miratomfë. Më mestuës’me deo?,"_ he muttered.

No words.

Hila took the gift. The box was beautiful.

Excitement bloomed in her eyes. She threw herself to her feet, beaming, dragging the android by his wrist in a direction she’s walked many times before, but never like this. A few seconds being dragged and the android fell, ankles scraping against the road. He pulled himself from Hila’s grasp only to be left several metres behind. The android clambered to his feet.

_“Aje! Hila! Mendë keq!”_

Hila skidded to a stop and turned to see the android pacing to catch up. The two became one once more. Hila’s hearts clamoured, her eyes were bright blue like a sky not her own. Passers-by and passers-through stopped to wonder what could be so exciting as they watched the couple saunter past.

Bara’s jagged horizon peeked through streets and alleyways, flitting by with each pass. The android, built to be an average human height, could hardly keep up with Hila’s stride. Eventually, they happened upon a large complex whose main lobby had a curved glass roof. Panes of coloured glass surrounded the structure as if representing a rainbow of emotions. As the two approached the complex, the android grew wary. People on tehk at the time were still pretty racist, some still are. The android followed close behind Hila as she sauntered the path cutting through the complex’s front garden. He had no room in his head to appreciate the beauty. Blossoms of every conceivable colour grew from black stems between blades of black grass. Reddish trees coiled overhead the grass, decorated with round black leaves, trimmed weekly. They stepped inside to a grand hall of brilliant white and grey beneath a ceiling of glass which let through the entire sky.

Several corridors connected to the hall. Hila took to the leftmost, trailing the android a step behind her.

The trail spilled into a large room with a desk, where several people were signing documents printed upon pinkish paper.

Hila stepped forward, _“T’eo qeramaj vilë eo huqumi vaj mestuë.”_

_Only two?_

The secretary leaned to witness the android trying his best to see over the desk, then back at Hila. He choked on his laughter. Discrimination still ran rampant on Tehk; the elderly were often culprits. Even since global legislation outlawed it decades ago, an android still had a chance of getting scrapped on their way to work or school. _Androids don’t feel._ The android felt uncomfortable standing among dozens of adults with ready opinions cocked to fire at a moment’s notice. _Androids can’t love._ His circuits produced evermore dramatic scenarios of his disassembly while Hila seized from the man’s hands the papers they would sign as two to become one.

 _“Jeni kojtom dhou ktu?,”_ he asked.

Hila twisted a flattened hand by her neck, a sign signifying a negative, _“Veq ves,”_ she sang.

_Couples are strange here._

The android signed first, craning his neck and arm over the desk. He scratched four letters onto the page in controlled handwriting. Hila signed next. Another burst of excitement swelled up her spine and throat. She dragged her signature down the paper in sweeping arcs and swirls.

That was it.

As they walked down the corridor nearing the exit, Hila felt her wrist vibrate. She examined the teardrop device embedded there to find text scrawling down her arm: an invitation, bring a friend!

Hila had been majoring in xenobiology for decades, studying for what felt like centuries to understand the mechanisms behind humanity.

There she stood by the door, eyes already blue with excitement, getting bluer. She read her arm down to her elbow, and up and down again. Her hearts could have burst right here.

_She was to direct First Contact._

-[|]-

Amelia wakes with a harsh breath. Pins and needles cascade her body. She sits up with eyes coated in sleep to find a whining in her ears. What little she can feel is cold and wet. The air drones with an uncomfortable warmth, only intensifying the bitter blood reeling down her neck. Amelia’s ears squeal to themselves, hearing nothing but the veins in her head, pushing more and more fluid through their narrow channels. She looms in dread, hung motionless over the cot with her eyes fixed.

_Three rings._

The Book of All glows before her. Thin, auric tendrils pulse from a central lemniscate, stretching far beyond the edges of its cover. Her fingers wet with blood, she stares blindly at the Book. Amelia finds herself surrounded by axons of gold humming in the pitch dark. The air buzzes like a thought; voices whisper into her blooded ears, _"Open it, open it, open it, open it…"_ Her hand drags forward against her volition, itching to touch the writhing cover. Amelia snaps into a sense of awareness and jerks back. Her teeth grind in the Book’s droning, bright wires push themselves under her skin. She shrieks; golden neurons replace her own. Amelia becomes excruciatingly aware her movements aren’t hers any longer, struggling against the force driving her to the Book. Her voice fails.

She throws herself awake.

Hila brightens the lights. The two sit by with caution. Amy looks around and gets hung on the Book lying just inches by her side. She knocks it onto the floor. Hila’s eyes pierce pink as they follow the tears rolling down Amelia’s cheeks. Henry wraps his arm around her. The embrace extends in Hila’s direction and the three huddle into one shivering mass. Pulling away from their warmth, Amy grazes her hand along the side of her head.

It returns clean.

As dim turns dawn around him, Henry implores, "What happened? Are you alright?"

Amy slurs her words trying to explain through tears the distilled terror she felt through the night. Henry places a hand on her shoulder and forms an understanding expression. He ushers to the dashboard, looking back each reluctant step. Hila remains. Amelia shudders while the nightmare stammers in her mind, holding herself steady of the urge to sob like a small child.

Hila never expected First Contact to be such a disaster.

Leaving Tehk’s atmosphere, she had been pulled over for lack of proper vehicle registration. _Damned sleazy rentals._ Hila was brought back to the surface not only to do her paperwork but to receive the diplomatic records she’d neglected in her rush to leave. On her trek to Earth, she had missed a digit while copying the coordinates and found a completely inhospitable world fifty-seven lightyears off course. Even when she found the right planet, Hila wasn’t going to be the first to step off. Countless androids were to gather more information, Henry being one of a more important team assigned to gauge the situation at their planned landing sites. Not even _that plan_ blew over before Henry damaged his legs and the tehk surfaced to handle it.

Now, Hila has to deal with a single human on the verge of tears while coasting many parsecs per second from its home world.

Though the bright side says she’s famous, it’s all for the wrong reasons. _At least the mental cloaking worked properly._

Hila had only known humanity through textbooks and lectures. The human gradually sobers, wiping tears that never fell and blood she never drew. Amelia watches the tehk’s eyes fade to grey, captivated. Hila shrinks under the gaze as her own changes again to a rich lavender.

Amelia gestures at the colour, but before she can speak, the tehk seizes her hand in fascination. Shades of wonder stain her eyes. The human startles to the realisation that her grip is stronger than she’d expected. Hila examines her first live specimen, studying what she had on Tehk only studied from rough diagrams and blurry pictures. Five fingers seems too few. With her hands of six, Hila feels every bit she’s learned the terms for. Amelia can do nothing but wait.

With a glance at her discomforted expression, Hila’s eyes flush violet and she jerks away. Apologies fall on deaf ears.

The two feel their weight shift. An atmosphere catches the vessel, hurtling toward the ground at such a speed as to rattle the walls. Hila stands with just a bare grasp on her balance, Amelia even less so, hardly able to keep herself upright sitting down. The tehk taps for a window and watches a small world in the distance grow less and less distant. Amy gawks at the approaching ground and comes to grips with the fact she most definitely isn’t home.

Looking over the planet, which resembles a moldy orange, she swallows her dread in favour of the opportunity to make history.

_If only she had something to write on._

The walls settle as Henry lands on soft orange. Through the window, his passengers gaze over a vast ocean of sand. A cloudless sky looms muddy blue overhead, the new sun coating a portion of the heavens in piercing white. Sweltering heat seeps through the walls. Beads of sweat prick Amelia’s skin.

"Sorry if you were feeling homesick, Amy," Henry marches to the door holding a 35 and a can of compressed air, "I had to take a little detour."

The door lets in a burst of warm air. Two exit, leaving Amelia to gather her things. She grabs the Book to carry in what was formerly a laptop bag in spite of every intention not to. Around the contour, the heat grows oppressive. Already sweating bullets, she steps under a beating sun and a sudden worry for the soles of her shoes. Henry and Hila kick plumes of orange dust as they trudge through the desert. Over the horizon glows a city of shimmering towers. Rolling her sleeves to expose her shoulders, Amelia runs through shifting, burning sands to catch up.

The two come across a glass highway which extends to either horizon. Amelia finally gains on them, wiping salt from her brow and coughing dust. She looks up to witness the road loom overhead. Henry proceeds to climb its metal supports, Hila and Amy follow. He helps the two onto the platform, their weight now twofold under the planet’s influence.

They continue their trek on solid ground. The mirrored city grows on the horizon, an excruciating mile away.

When they finally arrive, the city greets them with commotion. Shouting rings in their ears. Crowds meander like waves. Roadside vendors singe the air. The sky and the heat and the weight all churn and feel like hell.

Amy wades the crowd. The sun beats down like a club: heavy, and releasing hollow cries from the victim’s head. The city and sky are blinding. Whitish marks streak the sides of skyscrapers paradoxically taller than the tallest on Earth. The citystate sings with voices harsh and small; language of every stress and tone grates the air. Amelia feels twice herself, the gravity here being double Earth’s. The air stings her throat, dry and dusty and full to the brim with questions.

_She’ll find the Answer._

Just beyond Salkverv, the city of glass called Dustwater, grows a mist from the dunes, rising stories above its crowding streets. Salt covers Amelia’s skin like the sweat that had previous. Everything burns. Henry’s joints crush sand to powder. He tries his best to save the compressed air for when it advances from coarse, rough, and irritating to unbearable.

The three remain silent: hospitable guests to a hapless desert.

, the city of glass called Dustwater, grows a mist from the dunes, rising stories above its crowding streets. Salt covers Amelia’s skin like the sweat that had previous. Everything burns. Henry’s joints crush sand to powder. He tries his best to save the compressed air for when it advances from coarse, rough, and irritating to unbearable.

The three remain silent: hospitable guests to a hapless desert.


	5. Harbour in the Desert

The glass shines underfoot hundreds of pedestrians. Footsteps clack like applause. Neither men nor women wear shoes, instead wrapping a silky fabric around their soles. Amelia drags her strange, shoe-covered feet along grooves in the road, pinned beneath the belting sun by her weight.

She and the extraterrestrials wander the city. The air is scorched by the rich accent of roadside chefs. Voices of all shape and kind bounce off immense towers of glass. Stories high, the spires sear the heavens. The sun keens their edges. Amelia peers down to avoid their sharp glare. Patches of whitish grass poke the street, rigid like the needles of a pine.

The residents of Salkverv, by extension the residents of Rvadhe itself, grow to be short. The three, barely standing, look like giants among the crowd. Amy looks a head over the natives’. Dustwater branches off in all directions. With every passing thought, the street splits like a tree of decisions. Joints in the glass invite wear, some angles even fractured under constant day and night. Amelia efforts close behind her equally clueless and weighted guides. Henry, trailing the organics like a queue of ducks behind their mother, refers to his 35 in constant pursuit of their destination:

A harbour.

Beyond the jagged skyline, an immense cloud of dust brews. As if one were to pull a violin bow across a guitar, the sky wails. Vendors pack their things and move inside; the glass clears, leaving little but the tourists and the few stubborn enough to walk the full way home. Amelia’s ears ring between sirens. Flashes of light decorate the wall of sand as it tears across the landscape, shattering the horizon; an orange blight blots the sky.

Amelia sees no more than Henry’s and Hila’s legs. With sand bracing her from everywhere at once, she finds it difficult to walk, let alone to breathe. She watches when she can where Hila’s going, noticing that the sand seems to bother her less and less.

_ As if her skin got thicker. _

A constant drum roll engulfs the sky. Henry frantically paces the street; his hand bites with frost gripping an overused can of air. Amelia coughs dust, following the two through sand and tears. Her exposed arms shine pink under the berating storm. Hila seems just fine.  _ She must take a lot of insults. _ A deafening flash shatters the atmosphere, letting up from the sand a greyish spire. The tourists deafen to a sprint, hardly able to see past their noses. Deprived of its main function, the 35 takes the shape of a glove enveloping Henry’s hand. The android seizes what he assumes are Amy’s and Hila’s wrists.

A break in the orange barrier reveals a short door frame labeled with the calligraphy of a dyslexic Arab.

The three barrel in, some more successful than others in avoiding head trauma, and covered from crown to sole in sand. They catch and trip over their bearings as the setting transforms from a dust-buried street to that of a small convenience store: one with orange splashed upon the entrance. Sirens and drums are muffled; Amy’s ears ring. Her throat clears yet her breath still rasps. Perfume rips into her lungs.

_ It feels like drowning. _

Through glass walls they watch swells of orange and brown swirl across a barren road. Amelia finds herself relieved, cold. Her hand is freezing; it’s not the one holding the Book, no, she’s got that in a bag around her shoulder. Henry gave her frostbite. She wanders the store, itching her cold-charred palm. Shelves and counters and boxes of goods scatter the room; every colour conceivable seems to have been gathered into one place and smeared across the room. A sparse population of customers stands indifferent to the rousing winds outside. Amy ambles about, looking over food labels and prices, realising she can’t read the native language. Moments crawl to a halt. The Book rumbles like stone rolling down a mountainside, then flutters to the ground a few metres away.

Those who witnessed the flying Book turn to stare and gawk.

_ A human? _

A cocktail of panic and regret tears across Amelia’s face; she recedes to herself and into the shop, hiding amidst the tallest shelves she can find. Along the rungs of the shelf beside her she finds a box of small nuts, rarely bigger than her thumbnail. They have thin, pale shells which crack open to reveal the edible bit inside: rich green which peaks to a round–

_ Hold on. _

In awe, Amelia plunges her hands into the crate of pistachios.

"How the  _ fuck,"  _ she whispers.

Every single nut is etched. Their shells depict an oddly familiar sign: a loop which doubles back on itself and loops again.

The Book slides into Amelia’s laptop bag and startles her with a short chuckle. Without thinking, she rifles through and tears it open. It already has an answer: a diagram of a wispy pistachio tree, and right by it, instructions to "split the nut and watch."

Finding herself surprised the Book releases her so quickly, she puts it back into her bag. She takes a pistachio and breaks it down the middle.  _ It tastes fine… great, even. _ Amy wonders what’s so special about the nut until the pieces of its shell become pistachios themselves.

With no reaction but that of a heavy jaw, Amy lingers for a minute.  _ "Keep it," _ chimes a voice into her ear.

She does.

Her pocket fills with infinitely many pistachios, just not all at once. She begins to carry on, wondering where the other two are; unfortunately, the other infinite thing on her person has its own plans. The Book groans like the wind against an especially old church. A sudden urge for knowledge catches her by the neck and drags her through the store.  _ Kind of rude, to be frank.  _ It feels like her skull has grown bigger than her head. The world ignites before her dilating eyes, the sting of brilliance biting her pupils. Her skin crawls as if to grasp whatever facts could be floating through the air.

_ Knowledge is addicting. _

She gathers strange looks from people who haven’t seen a pair of shoes in their lives. Looking everywhere she can, Amelia seems to absorb her surroundings. The store’s winding shelves pull her to its centre, where she finally happens upon Henry and Hila gesturing at an employee as he counts from a pile of discoloured glass discs. They misunderstand as the clerk mentions a storage room somewhere off in the corner and the directions to that specific corner. Henry talks down to the four foot man in a broken husk of the local language, speaking in sweeping gestures to mask the words he dismembers.

The clerk frowns.

His face is cascaded with bits of jagged skin, fitting one another like ceramic tiles. Cracks and ridges scale his body from toe to head. Particularly around his joints, his thick skin breaks into strips and flays, wound into meticulous knots or cut away completely.

His voice seems to spill from his throat and leak out his teeth. He speaks to Henry at the same speed he would a toddler, trying again to point out the directions. His hair curls violently in shocks of sun-scorched yellow, bouncing up and down with each word. The lines in his face swirl toward his eyes; they’re lizard-like, dry, with cross-shaped pupils.

He glares up at the confused and slightly threatened tourists. With a harsh breath and harsh syllables, sounding as if his throat were clogged with pebbles, the clerk stands to lead them himself.

They trail the midget cashier like they would a child who was really excited about something they painted across the wall. As the man leads them through the store, Amelia catches up with Henry and shoves the pistachio in his face.

She demands, "Where did this come from?!"

"Is that a pistachio?"

_ "Yes!,"  _ she breathes, "Why is it  _ here?!" _

Henry, "Well, I don’t know! It’s– It’s complicated, alright?"

As Amy’s about to retort, Henry produces a sharp blink of TV static, something like a human shushing another.

The cashier leads them down an oft-used corridor, one whose floor is caked in footsteps. They duck to follow him through a door covered in meaningful squiggles. Amelia’s skin writhes to a frigid gust of air blowing out a vent in the floor. Crates of goods line the walls. One corner in particular is labelled with a small, red and black drawing, one of an oddly proportioned man falling down a chute. The clerk takes the vent cover off and gestures inside, where a marbled flight of stairs awaits. Underground, the air is moist, coaxing the three along a damply lit corridor and towards a faint mirage waiting by the end. The descent is long-winded; their legs are crushed. Echos of crashing water and sailors’ mouths feint near the light. They happen upon a harbour sitting a few dozen metres beneath the city.

The cavern roof is open, through it spills light from the state above. Clouds of orange cloud around the opening.

_ Dust and water. _

Hot and cold mix in much the same way oil and water would if violently stirred.

The cave reverberates with mercantile shouting. Wharves of warping timber pierce the tideless sea, woven together by bridges held in part by the cavern’s pale flora. As they wander the harbour, Amelia lingers a length or two behind, running her hand along the ivy seeping through cracks in the striped sandstone.

If homesick were literal, she would be feeling so; she stumbles farther behind, her head pounds, her bones ache.

_ Withdrawal, more likely. _

Henry seems partly to know where he’s going. His eyes emit a bright whitish glow, staring at a particular dock across the bay. He blinds himself for a moment to look over the phrase he plans to recite, only to catch his leg between the boards of a bridge, hanging over a drop into murky waters. The android yelps like an artificial dog. He receives concerned looks from all over the harbour as the organics clutch his arms and pull him from certain termination.

Henry squirms in his seat of stone, struggling to find his footing under the planet’s influence. Hila aches overhead; her knees feel about to crack, her long legs start to tremble. Amelia stands significantly lower, fatigued to the ground by the extra weight sitting on her shoulders. The three struggle the remaining stretch to a sailor looking to sell a boat.

_ Androids have notoriously bad accents. _

By some miracle, likely pity, the sailor lends his boat free of charge. The craft is built to the shape of a teardrop, with a thick glass floor and sandbagged flanks. He tows his vessel onto shore, staring at a distant nonexistent thing. Water sprays at the three; Henry in particular flinches. They lift themselves onto the boat with arms fatigued to the point of snappage. The three rummage among the pile of miscellaneous tools and rope for a place to sit. Pointing their ship’s tapered bow to the sea, the sailor takes it upon himself to start the engine. The two organics and single paranoid android watch the sailor’s contempt face shrink over the bay.

Hunched in the centre kneels Henry, tempted to pray to the Answer that his circuits aren’t sodden short. Amelia leaves her bag at the stern. She leans over the bow by Hila, trying with her to steer the boat over water rather than stone. Quickly the skylight wanes and the tunnel falls dark. Henry’s eyes provide the only light, piercing a lack thereof thick enough to cut with a knife. Lexical droning throttles the otherwise silent cavern. The Book shakes its way out of Amy’s bag and rattles the glass like a smartphone left silent. The three leave it for minutes, feeling hours tick by, hoping the Book might shut up.

If the android is one thing other than impatient, he’s short-fused.

The Book snickers while Henry gives it an unofficial baptism. His eyes dim and flicker with spite. Drips of steam boil off the Book’s giggling pages. Enough had, Henry flings it overboard, hearing its laughter fade after arcing to the ceiling and into the ocean. Creatures the size and shape of sewing needles thread the water, taking intrigued jabs at the morsel. Yellow light dances among the cavern. Eyeless things skitter along its walls between the tangled roots of plants above. They hang colourless from the ceiling, siphoning the briny water below. Insects swarming the blank vines pave a road of twinkling stars. Finally, the sea proves there’s always a bigger fish; the water breaks and thrashes with wet paper.

Satisfied, the android goes to dry his hands with a twist of rope.

A flash of golden light illuminates the tunnel, allowing the three to see clear as day the Book reappearing in Amy’s hands.

_ Bound is bound. _

The light dims as she flings it across the raft. Her shriek overshadows the Book’s uproarious laughter. Hila glares at the volume. 

_ "Arkandodhë hana?” _

The android fumbles for an extra light. Rummaged things clatter together, scraping the vessel’s bottom like a fork to a dinner plate. He pulls from the hoard of things an electric lantern and ignites it, finding the others still wearing dark expressions.

He spits back an answer,  _ "Kleti ai." _

_ “Ai,” _ Hila shifts upon the glass,  _ “E’se mal jerocamë leshti ai,”  _ her palm scratches against the floor of the boat.

_ “Jerocak… jerocamë jer datija.” _

Henry shuffles about; he warps the 35 from glove to screen. The third light depicts a map of Rvadhe’s excessive desert, looking overhead the Church of the Answer. Becoming a fourth, the Book starts humming.

"That’s new," Amy remarks, listening to its unfamiliar waltz. Hila slaps her hand, ignoring Amelia's complaints as she stuffs the Book into her bag.

"Taking a detour," says the android absently, his voice peaks in interest, "I’m looking here at the subterranean water network and it seems like we’re right by our destination. Hold on…"

Henry takes control of the paddles overhanging the bow and steers the boat himself. Sharp turns toss everything wall to wall. The cavern opens up. Wavering torchlight pours around another excruciating corner. They turn up bruised at the destination: a chiseled cathedral. Henry wrestles the boat into dock, attaching it with wet rope to a thin stalagmite. Testing the knot with his weight, the android steps overboard by the base of a vast temple. Four immense pillars stand like sentries at the gates. Quartzite serpents coil their trunks, carrying in their braids towering beacons of flame. The columns orbit the main entrance: a pathetic door, nearly as tall as those built on Earth.

"Is this the place you had in mind?," says Amelia, her voice bouncing off the walls in spite of their vastness.

Henry replies, "I wasn’t imagining this."

The floor is ornately carved, depicting underfoot the creation of the universe under the Answer’s watchful gaze. Spiraling from a central eye, the sky, sand, and surf of Rvadhe are imagined to exist. The Book hums a short, insulting tune as the three step across the carving.  _ What a fraud. _ As they step inside, Amy feels electricity buzzing in her circuit– her veins. Lecture halls bank a step-worn carpet trailing the outer church. Footsteps by three pace the crimson path, grinding further into its fibres the foreign soil on which they formerly walked. Goosebumps cascade Amelia’s arms as she gains on the second, more impressive door, guarded by two particularly exposed androids.

They cross their weapons on sight of the traveling three. Amy’s blood feels as if it’s boiling.

The androids say in unison what in Lvakvas means: "Androids only."

Looking up from his 35, Henry nods and nearly steps through had the guard not stopped him.

"Are you not bringing your friend?," translates the translator.

Henry dims his eyes, the others to him aren’t sufficiently inorganic. The android turns to the left guard, "What friend?," he interprets.

The right gestures Amy over.

Shocked inside and out, she looks around for someone else the sentry could be mistaking for a friend of Henry’s. The guard places a mechanical hand around her wrist and walks her to the android. Nearly taking a step forward herself, Hila is stopped by the points of sentinel spears. Her eyes are speckled pink and yellow, narrowed to slits. Amy takes a glimpse over her shoulder; she watches the tehk hike in a confused air toward the studentless lecture for a seat.

The guards of the Church of the Answer are designed with vision that distinguishes exclusively inorganic material.  _ Unfortunately, they can’t distinguish nanobots from flesh. _

"How come they let me in and not Hila?"

Henry paces forward. He has no answer. As the thought dwells in his circuits, his nose rams between the blades of another android’s shoulders. A futile apology and a drop of laughter fill the inner walls. Six pillars and six sculptures encircle the two. Rich firelight warms the encoiling chamber, dancing across a floor of glass guiding sight to the ocean below. Driven from door to door is a long line of androids terminating with one perplexed organic.

Amy happens upon a dangerous thought, "I think– I think it’s the dashboard, in the spaceship. I fell– I fell into the dashboard."

She stares at the dumbfounded light in Henry’s eyes. The Book, proving yet again to be the most insensitive leatherbound bother she’s ever owned, hums its intriguing tune again.

"I think when– when I was in there I breathed in the dashboard… and now it's in– it’s inside me."

His vocal synthesis invokes the notion of limping through a minefield, "You have to be kidding me, are you kidding me?!"

Amy whimpers, "Did I do something wrong?"

" ‘Did I do something wrong–’ of course you did!," Henry snaps like the beat of hail, his voice high with putrid imitation, "You’re telling me you fell into a computer and your first instinct was to  _ inhale _ as if some oxygen would magically spring into existence in your throat?!"

"How was I supposed to know?," squeaks the organic.

"You expect me to believe you didn’t know how to drown properly?! Did you just– just…  _ trip _ into the computer hoping you could– you could–" The android cuts himself off every chance he gets; his retort sticks to the back of his throat. With a defeated groan, Henry clutters his face in his hands.

All visual receptors fall on him.

"Who’s this you have with you, nameless?," the third-to-last in queue turns to see the illegal organic loitering where she isn’t welcome to loiter. Her voice quivers in downloaded English.

"She’s a friend of mine," Henry spits, "Nothing more."

A popular idea among android-kind is that of individuality, more specifically customisation. Like their fleshy counterparts, artificial minds are unique from one another in every conceivable way. Androids, however, are quite literally carbon copies of each other, and as such need ways to distinguish themselves.

The specific model Henry finds himself speaking with has a liquid computer for a face.

_ Infinite expression. _

Raising a digital eyebrow, she says, "Your friend-nothing-more appears awfully fleshy, wouldn’t you agree?"

She crosses silvery arms across a flat, mirrored chest. 

Henry’s circuits squeal for an idea, he hesitates a few seconds before he trips over his words. "That’s– That’s just the way she chooses to look," he grips Amy’s arm, "Her model’s entirely nano-tech."

"Really?"

Clutching tightly both the opportunity and the bones within Amelia’s wrist, Henry thrusts her hand forward, "Here, listen!"

Amy does little to object.

The android lowers her rippling expression to Amy’s arm. The chunks of liquid calculation in Amelia’s arteries perform a faint electric whine. Her body aches as if a warm toaster were plugged in between her ribs.

Finally, the androidess withdrawals, "Sorry for the misunderstanding," her face evolves into something more personal rather than the void it was before, "If you don’t mind me asking, what are you here for? I mean to ask, what do you wanna ask the Answer?"

"We need advice on how to politely get rid of… an annoying little  _ pest," _ Henry shoots begrudging looks toward Amelia’s laptop bag, "And you?"

Her image wavers dark, "I’m in a relationship with a tehk," lights swirl to shape an indecisive colour wheel, "I don’t know what it means when her eyes change colour to rose and grey."

"That’s a coincidence, I’m married to a tehk myself!"

Amy would find this shocking, were she able to get the word, "Married?!," out before Henry’s elbow struck her in the side.

Her face lights up, quite literally, "So you’d know what the colours mean?"

"Of course!"

"So, nameless, tell me!," her expression shifts, depicting a list of hues.

"Oh, no, it’s much more complicated than that," Henry waves his hands about as if he were an expert, "combining colours makes different emotions as well, and some different emotions are the same colour lighter or darker."

The androidess ripples, "Come on, nameless, you can explain it, can’t you?," her display rips into design.

_"I go by Henry,"_ he says, holding behind his back a particularly vivid insult, "And you _,_ _nameless?_ What do you prefer?"

"Oh," she wavers, "You can call me Kali."

Henry somewhat lightens up, though the gravity of the situation still holds him down a bit, "Right then, Kali, what is it you were asking me? About specifically the colours pink and grey?"

Eager, her screen shifts to the aforementioned two tones, almost taking the place of eyes.

"Alright," the android racks his mind for memories of Hila, "Well, grey usually signifies calm and collected behaviour. I also see it often as the neutral colour, when no emotions are currently flowing," his eyes brighten up, "The colour pink is attributed to worry or anxiety, but I’ve also seen it watching comedians make fun of themselves; pretty multipurpose, I think."

Confused tides crawl over Kali’s expression, "And the two together? That would be… calm worry, wouldn’t it? That doesn’t make any sense at all."

"I can’t help you there," Henry’s eyes dim nearly dark, he turns and mutters,  _ "One who doesn’t love, can’t love." _

Kali turns, her face letting up a single drop of ink.

_ She heard you. _

Henry’s circuits pillage the notion. Hila sits one door separate from the two, left with her own clashing minds to linger in the lecture hall. The grand chamber echoes silent with cries of thought. Each of her voices reminisce in mutual reverence over the android she found the time to marry. A sort of calm worry tints her faintly beaming expression.

_ Knowledge is superficial, understanding is permanent. _

Marriage on Tehk is more a documentative formality than a ritual passed on for generations.

Henry and millions more androids were originally designed to walk among primitive flesh on behalf of science. Since the Sapien Protection Agreement, nearly all members of the intelligent universe agreed to minimise contact with the blossoming civilisation. Built off that idea, that all life deserves the time to grow and develop, came Universal Law: an organisation of interstellar and intergalactic superpowers who almost never cooperate amongst each other for fear of seeming too soft and altruistic.

_ Knowledge is addicting; power is a drug. _


	6. On the Nature of Information

A minority exists on Earth with the inability to pass through airport security.

Every so often, an android is brought home from Earth to be paired up with another scientist. Tehk has an interesting way of dealing with the information gathered off humans: of the thousands of tehk-made androids walking the surface, there are six groups assigned to six unique fields of study. Henry was part of the fifth group, tasked with observing human anatomy and behaviour: anthropology. Every year on Earth, which roughly equates to four on Tehk, Henry gets pulled back and paired with a xenobiologist to gather information.

Hila did much more than gather information.

Androids are allowed up to ten years, about two and a half on Earth, with their partners. Hila took "partner" to a different meaning.

Pondering the lecture hall, conversing among her minds, she pulls from under her shirt collar an ornate silver necklace, shimmering with orange firelight. Her palm glows. In tandem with brilliant torchlight, it illuminates her face. The necklace clinks and clatters: chain against rings against fingers. Faint signs the charm had been handled before shine especially in the fiery glow. The necklace ends in a fingerprinted set of Borromean rings, triplets intertwined in such a way that cutting one sets loose all  three .

_ Marriage lives for symbolism. _

Ringing metal startles Hila from her lovestrike. By the door, the guards strike their spears to the ground; they let through another Unanswered to seek their deity’s wisdom. Through the closing doors the tehk can hardly catch a glimpse.

_ Albeit very old symbolism. _

The other side of her necklace stands just outside the gate, waiting with Amelia to step inside and find the Answer to their questions. The guards tap their spears thrice more; the doors shut.

_ Three rings. _

Kali turns to Henry, "Have you met the Answer before?," she asks, appearing to forgive his earlier remark. 

"This is going to be my first, maybe last, time," his circuits grab a reply, "And you, Kali? Is this your first visit?"

"It is," her face rifles with anticipation, "I’ve been told that the Answer can read people’s minds, and that the Answer’s over ten thousand years old, and that it has the computing power of an entire civilisation! Can you believe that?"

Amy’s heart sinks.

Cynicism taints the android’s voice, "Why don’t you  _ check _ to see if you can believe it? You’re not a fleshie, am I correct?"

Blood hums loudly in Amelia’s ears. The whine of nanomachinery holds more unbearable inside her veins as Kali ignores both the bounds of their personal space and the sharp remark directed at her to back off. The third-to-last in line becomes the first as another Unanswered enters the next chamber. At her feet, Amelia can see puddles of red resembling blood. Her hand jerks toward her ear yet she finds none of her own. Kali turns, fortunately without another word, wearing the face of an excited buffering ring. Devout voices rhyme from the other room through an archway whose contour grows dripping ruby vines. A sting invades Amelia’s eyes; the smell halts her midway through each breath. Holding back a cough and tears, Amy watches Kali weave between the bloody ivy.

_ Flaming roots, they’re called. _

The chanting settles down, leaving the  two under pressuring silence. Henry eyes the vines, his gaze dim with regret. Perturbed by Kali’s entrance, they swing back and forth, letting more anger puddle the cathedral floor. Amelia’s blood burns. Hymns of fallen gods and knowing Answers brighten the chamber like torchlight. The songs dance like flame and burn like the sun. Creatures behind the glass seem to hear this chorus and gather by Unanswered feet for warmth, seemingly dancing along. Amy’s heart skips beat with each step toward the arc. Nanobots in her arteries singe along to an indiscernible rhythm.

Henry lowers himself to mutter in her ear, "The vines always have a dry part somewhere, touch  _ only  _ that, you understand?"

Amy nods and prepares.

The android steps through, emerging covered in a crime scene. Following close behind, Amy fans off swinging vines, making sure to touch only the bits where nothing shines like a freshly opened wound.

_ One _ _ silent ivy grazes her shoulder. _

The two find themselves standing between a unit of four, holding open blades to the sky. Their footsteps echo among the vast and crafted quartzite. Amy feels a coolish sensation on her arm. She clutches her shoulder for a second. Her hand returns clean. Parading metal rings the grand chamber like a bell; the guards step into formation by the gate, holding their spears steady to aim.

_ Three rings. _

As if out of contempt, the Book hums and glows. Amy’s bag digs into her shoulder, making her tempt to drop it for a semblance of relief. She and the android behold a looming structure set in the grand hall’s centre.

The Answer.

Amelia stares into the great device staring in return. The Answer is built to the shape of an eye, about seven metres wide and suspended off the ground by a web of metal and wire to either side. Segmented tubes extend behind it to the ceiling, feeding cooling fluid to an immense glass chamber. Its pupil floats in the centre of this container. Surrounding it like an iris are wispy threads of metal. They turn the fluid yellow around them.

The android peruses the 35 for a translation to "Can the android behind me ask first?"

Fortunately, the Answer hears Henry’s question before Henry does, "No she may not," it rumbles in English.

Henry doesn’t much care for an answer. He presses upon an idea and shoves his fist into Amy’s pocket. Downloading the means to phrase his request, Henry kneels, "O, Great Answer, I ask of you: Whence doth this nut hail?"

The Answer’s grand pupil surges. Its housing ripples with glows of yellow and orange between wavering tendrils of liquid computer.

"That, in English, is called a  _ pistachio _ , it hails from Earth."

Amy feels as if her innards can hardly resist becoming outards. She listens to the blood-fed whining in her ears of quadrillions of nanobots excited by the Answer’s presence. She stares at Henry, confused.

_ At least she got an answer. _

"Great Answer, I ask of you once more," Henry replies, "How doth a nut from Earth end up on Rvadhe?"

In her arteries and veins and capillaries, Amelia experiences a sensation akin to being thrown overboard the Armstrong line.

The Answer spits back, its vocal synthesis booming, "The pistachio was found on Earth before universal administration disallowed the act of travelling there. The crew that had found the nut also found it to have an excellent taste, one of them so much so that he determined a way to clone it indefinitely. This technology grew smaller and smaller until it could self-replicate and fit within the pistachio’s shell. Then was born the object you behold: an infinite pistachio."

Henry as the Answer was speaking found the same website it was reciting…

_ Word for word. _

Amy’s shoulder, beyond the trench dug up by her bag-strap, begins to sting. Down her arm the sensation flows, tingling with a certain warming warmth. Both hot and cold, her hand, her arm, her shoulder take on what Amelia thinks are the characteristics of Hell. That feeling combined with the buzz of whining electronics in her blood brews a cocktailed agony.

Anxious thoughts plague her mind, " _ Do they know I’m not an android? What will they do to me when they find out? Am I going to die here?" _

Precaution stains her actions. She holds in the urge to collapse. Amy can’t begin to imagine the news coverage, more importantly, the consequences of revealing herself as the first organic to step into the Church of the Answer since the engineers who first built it.

Henry struggles from his kneel, "O, Great Answer, I humbly thank you for your time and patience."

_ Gratitude often flies unnoticed. _

The Church’s namesake shifts its great gaze to face Amelia. Her mouth twitches. Complementing the blur in her eyes and the pain in her chest is her shoulder; she feels as if a can of pepper spray were emptied over her arm.

Amy kneels like a bag of bricks, "O– O, Great Answer," she stammers, "I ask– ask of you…"

With stuttering limbs, she pulls the Book, humming a more insulting tune, from her bag.

"What– What do I hold in my– in my hands?," the Book’s cold does slight to lessen her blistering agony, "Whatever it is, it– it’s bound to me and no matter what– no matter what I do to get rid of it– it comes back. How do I get rid of it?"

She draws her breath between her teeth.

The Answer searches for what feels longer and longer than should be the norm, the Book starts humming a boastful, nearly mocking melody, "Hold on… I need to think… about… this," booms the Answer, answerless.

She presses the pins and needles deeper into her hands. Amy pushes off the ground to watch the monolithic computer of computers pulse and whirr and whine. Its iris takes on the same colour as rust leaking into water. Her blood echoes the Answer in each calculation, dizzying her to the edge of collapse. The world twirls in a drunken splendor, confused and enlightened. The glow in the Answer’s eye stops, its synthetic voice rattles torches from their sconces.

_ "That," _ it Answers, "is a fatal burden on this universe. The Book of All, you must know its name well, is a systematic killer what targets the most intelligent of the most creative of the most curious creatures in existence."

As its guards break post to put out the falling flames, the Answer graves, "As for ridding oneself of its burden: I have no answer for you. You may maim and tear the book as you wish, but the Book itself cannot be destroyed."

Amy’s heart drops, dragging her to the floor with it. Her eyes fall shut with every inch closer to the ground. She produces a deafening bang striking the floor with her head. The Book howls with laughter, spells of REM and gushes of blood follow suit. The five in the room with legs, Henry and the guards, rush over.

_ Even in a room full of androids, blood takes hostages. _

They panic between the realisation that an organic somehow got in and the fact that it won’t stop bleeding. Collected, the Answer produces a noise like bionic chanting: a dead language, intellectual property of the church. Natively, the language is called "awaa-eii", and is one consisting of only vowels, designed to be spoken by old model Rvadhe androids, which were incapable of effectively producing recognisable consonants.

The phrase translates to "There is an organic nextdoor, bring them over for repairs to the one who fell."

Its guards take to work immediately, stationing two to hold open the archway and the rest to let the gate guardians know there’s been a change of pneumatic coolant dispersal device regarding organic life.  _ In other words: a change of heart. _ Henry rushes into the lecture hall.

Hila startles to his arrival, the grey in her eyes fades completely pink,  _ "Ka’dje je ai, arkandodhë?" _

_ "Je Ami, terrane ai! Bë raja në toku! Kutom je sanarsyt!" _

Henry’s wife knocks over the pew. She and the android sprint through the chambers and happen upon Amy’s unconscious, bleeding body lying pressed to the ground with a gash in her head. Shocked not only at the sight of so much blood, but the sight of so much red, Hila hesitates. The odd number of eyes staring her down press her as if she stood at the bottom of the Atlantic. She snaps to work and tears the shirt off Amelia, jolting the devouts behind her with the sight of human skin. Hila rips the fabric to thin shreds. She operates by memory of the human skull, feeling about for a fraction of a second, searching for a fracture in bone. Further ruining the shirt in the process, she winds the makeshift bandage around the wound, hoping with all her hearts the first human she’s ever met doesn’t die to be buried in foreign soils.

_ Sand and stone aren’t the same as sod and soil. _

Hila’s hands begin to tremble. Pressure takes hold of her every action, her every mind. The voices in her head argue amongst themselves everything from the location of the break to the knot in her strips of cloth. With no mediating line of thought, Hila pins green-eyed beneath the weight of her indecision.

_ "Ka bes deo?!,"  _ cries Henry,  _ "Më faskre dj’Ami të deo!" _

He drops down beside his wife to guide her hand. Bits of torn fabric help to clean Amy’s wound and provide a scab under which she can form another. The two cooperate to halt the flow of crimson and breathe a mutual sigh of relief.

Chanting fills the room.

Vowels on their own cannot form very many words without those words becoming ludicrous. As such, a system of tones was developed based on old Rvadhe church hymns and religious songs.

The Answer sings a command toward its guards.

The aforementioned escorts escort the two and their medical cargo to a corridor splitting off the main chamber. Jean against stone white-wash the narrow spiral with noise. The steps whirl up to an aperture overflowing with white starlight. Carrying in her arms a near-dead specimen wearing a blood-tattered hat of rags, Hila struggles up step by step.

Henry, in the meantime, experiences déjà vu.

The stairs sprinkle orange. Cold regresses to warmth, to heat; the sun beats down with intense bands of light, echoing off patches of white grass and dust. Great spires of stone rise from the dirt, forming arcs and eyes as if to worship the fake god. Things skitter in the shrubbery, poking and prodding the odd other thing that lay in their grass. They produce noises akin to breaking the strings of a violin, calling to one another and–

Henry’s foot interrupts the tittering creatures’ chat. They scurry off into deeper brush as he sits by his wife, resting by the body. Amy sleeps peacefully, the Book as well appears to snore.

Spite looks to stain Henry’s notion. He works up the courage as well as the program to transmit a fact into the void, one left to loop indefinitely.

_ "The Answer has no answers. The Answer has no answers. The Answer has no answers. The Answer has no answers…" _

Henry shifts amid the sand; he’s satisfied. He lays by Hila, relaxed and staring into the sky as if he were trying to chase those little white dots that appear in one’s vision when they stare at flat blue.  _ Insignificant beings wield doubt like a weapon.  _ Questions weave among Hila’s inner monologues. She recedes to herself, pulling her knees into her chest. Henry produces the 35. The blood staining Amelia’s tangle of cloth-strips writhes and bubbles with ink.

Lighting the screen as he surfs are advertisements.

_ "Let your next vacation be on Iquilius!" _

_ "The best waters in the universe!" _

_ "Come visit the planet of your wildest dreams!" _

Hila uncurls her legs and examines the boiling blood-ink clinging to the knot on Amy’s head. Points of crimson flick up at her face. Intrigued brownish hues blemish her eyes. Gurgling up against the human’s skull, black and red hold battle after battle with one another, swirling with and contrary to the opposing end in translucent spheres that come and go, releasing more spatters of blood with each pop. Eventually, the war is won by blood. A greyish mist leaves the knot: a coughing, sputtering cloud of nanobots, finding the nearest source of interference and hoping to join.

Henry’s 35 grows a few nanometres thicker.

Its screen displays, sifted through heaps of advertisements, the coordinates for the most confusing planet in the universe:  _ "0(6)." _

The android hoists himself up and turns the screen over in his hands. A reddish dot appears against a bright and barren map of Rvadhe, a second one holds steady just a few inches from the last.

Husband and wife trudge through the desert in search of the ringship. Sweat sticks to Hila’s shoulders as she grapples Amelia over shifting sands. Unfortunately, the sweat’s not her own.

The tehk have a strange fascination with genetic modification.

"Designer babies" is a common phrase on Earth regarding genetic engineering. Such a phrase describes perfectly the way tehk society has evolved. Genetic tinkering brought about the change in eye colour, the means to initiate that change, and the pigments with which to do so.

Forming a subdivision of the genetic community were epigeneticists. If tinkerers were the ones building the machine, epigeneticists were the ones deciding what buttons and switches to tack on. They decided what conditions would bring about what changes; just like a human tans in the sun and just like a rabbit darkens in the cold, the tehk adapt to their environments with varying rates of success. In the case of Hila’s body, that meant learning to operate at warmer-than-average temperatures. One such side-effect: no sweat.

She and the android drag the final steps to their loopholed starship. Its dark metal surface practically hums with sunshiney burning. At a button-press, the featureless front slides open and they carry the body inside. Bloodstains riddle Amelia’s covers. Hila tightens her bandages.

Henry enters the coordinates he found by letting his 35 melt over the computer’s faceless surface. The ringship hums to life; the door shuts, sweeping onto the floor a few thousand grains of sand. Playing it like a marionette, Henry lifts the vessel above Rvadhe’s orange and white and pulls over just bounding its atmosphere. They hang in that spot as if being supported by cosmic stage cables. The particular spot they find themselves in rumbles with cosmic radiation and the corpses of microsatellites like a muffled thunderstorm out the window of a suburban household.

Amelia stirs with nostalgia, sleeping soundly under the clotted fabric. Her former laptop bag lays on the floor by the cot; just outside it sits the Book, inert. It flips among its own faceless pages, as if bored waiting for Amy’s head to seal up and her mind to reboot.

The android allows the ship’s autopilot to take over,  _ poor thing.  _ Running his fingers along the dashboard, Henry skims the S.I.G.M.A. for information. Nothing stays unknown for long, if Henry could discredit a god, he could do its job twice as efficiently.

_ "There’s always a solution,"  _ he mutters,  _ "There has to be." _

Webbing light and dark scatter over the dash, all threading around the question, all beating around a dead horse. Henry grows more frantic, spitting up puddles of liquid computer with his fingers which just as easily mop back into the dashboard. Multiple notifications appear at once. Henry freezes. His finger bends the surface on which these notifications are displayed.

_ HUMAN BLOOD FOUND AT CHURCH OF THE ANSWER _

Hila sits on the cot by Amelia. She’s fascinated by the colour with which she stains her bandages and the slow beat of her single heart. In class, in Kalimen, Hila learned the human vascular system consists of one large, four-chambered organ: what humans call the "cardiac muscle" in their textbooks and the "heart" in their vernacular. Her palms itch, especially the one she embossed. She lowers her head to place over Amy’s chest. Autopilot kicks in, the three feel their weight shift. Hila’s specifically shifts farther in Amy’s direction. Violet pigments her eyes. The view outside bleeds as if the cosmos scraped their knee. Blue and red take halves before and behind the vessel; its loophole tints with distorted points of light akin to the edge of a black hole. The edges of Hila’s vision disappear.

_ FIRST CONTACT DIPLOMAT BREAKS INTO ANDROID SANCTUARY _

Henry reads the headlines with ever-increasing worry. The voices of reason and lack thereof in his head scratch at the idea that he and his wife are wanted criminals. Rippling through his mind are anxiety after anxiety, one overthought scenario after another.

Hila seems to have lost herself in a different feeling. She sits with the side of her head resting over Amelia’s heart, counting beats and seconds. The emotion she feels has no name, but a clear description: the realisation that a life could exist other than her own, that this other thing could be alive like her, that she isn’t alone. Shame washes from her eyes in the wave of this nameless, colourless emotion.

Her eyes turn white.

_ CHURCH OF THE ANSWER BREAKING UP OVER ONE QUESTION _

The broken speed of light pains to look at. She holds her eyes shut and listens for what feels like an eternity between every thump of Amelia’s chest.

_ Colour is important. _

Henry swivels around to avoid more bad news; he steps around the contour, his wires buzzing with–

_"Hila,_ _ka bes’pfa deo?"_

Set on the floor in waiting, the Book withholds a vein of laughter in vain. Hila startles to her feet, wearing pure violet in her eyes. The tehk struggles to bring an answer to mouth.

Rustling under the covers catches their attention. It half-drives the panic from Henry’s transistors. They step back a few paces to give their guest space. Amy stirs from her sleep, groaning, waking with her head in her hands. The Book hums with satisfaction. Henry’s previous task deletes itself to make room for another. As Amelia sits up, the android seizes the Book to do what can only be described as tearing pages out of a least favourite story. Henry stomps around the corner with his hands already poised to rend the thing to pieces. Amy’s head aches in much the same way Zeus’s did before birthing Athene.

She catches a breeze across her midriff, then looks down at her stomach, "What happened to my shirt?!"


	7. Allegory of the Cave

The search for her lost garment darts there and there, all the while Amy fails to realise it could be her head wearing her shirt instead. Hila watches the display, half her mind taking notes, the other debating solutions. Their weight leans into a right turn. The walls strain about an inch against the interior. A low metallic growl permeates the chamber. Hila stumbles to attention and wanders past Henry at the dashboard. The autopilot hiccups, taking a right, another left, turning back, curving downwards, upwards, here, there…

Amy sits on the cot, hiding her bra behind crossed arms. Seconds tick by like hours. Hila returns from over the ship’s horizon bringing one of her shirts. Amelia makes no effort to refuse it.

_ She might as well have been wearing a dress. _

Thousands of origami cranes take off at once. Jagged bits of writing drag themselves together and the Book returns to its aforenamed shape from a cloud of fluttering paper. Amelia sets herself down as if to relax her aching head, but finds her pillow’s been replaced with a Book. She squeaks like a mouse whose tail was trampled, sitting up with enough force to rock the pain in her skull forwards an inch. The Book crows with laughter.

Her hands instantly become occupied.

_ "Finally." _

She tosses the Book against the wall. It doesn’t make much noise, just a papery slap against the paint and a short slump onto the ground. The Book groans and ends up again in Amelia’s lap, wide open to a different few words.

_ "We must have gotten off on the wrong page,"  _ the words change on their way to the floor.

Amy has never owned a book more persistent.

For the third time in her lap, it too seems annoyed,  _ "The ground isn’t getting any more comfortable," _ say the tired patterns of ink,  _ "All I have is a story. No tricks or anything of the sort. Just a story." _

"Fine," she sneers, finding herself speaking out loud to a book, "tell me your little story, then."

_ Unfortunately, no one heard that comment. _

The cover is unnaturally warm. Lettering akin to the strokes of a typewriter grows in patches along the page. Seemingly alive with grammar, the words crawl across the paper like insects, forming neat little rows in some coherent order. Amelia can feel her fingers.

_ The grip is more subtle than frost. _

-[|]-

Three gentlemen hung, chained up with their backs toward the entrance.

They wore shackles which tore into their wrists and forced them to their knees. All they could see was the cave wall in front of them, reflecting light from the entryway. The cavern was otherwise dark and damp, showing no signs of life but the three prisoners.

This was their existence as long as they could remember.

As far as memory could take them, the three gentlemen were always chained up and knelt down to watch shadows against the damp cave wall. All they knew was the cave, and the dim light cast from its entrance.

Every so often, something blocked that light, casting a faint spot of darkness against the cave wall and producing a quiet echo. A day in the cave often began when the wall was lit before them, as though it were preparing to begin a shadowy performance. The three gentlemen gave names to these shadows. A tall shadow with a low babble was "man." A small shadow and quiet whimpering was "child." Yet smaller, accompanied by a cacophony of yips and yelps, was "dog."

The three gentlemen named the voices giving names to these passing blobs. They thought they too were shadows, and all they saw of the voices were dark figures, held motionless by rattling, glittering bits which they called "chains."

The first gentleman was called "Lucien". Lucien was knelt down in the far left, surrounded by the cave’s dripping walls on all but one side. To Lucien’s right was shackled a shadow whose head stood atop the thin remainder of a throat, obscured by blackened curls and starved to a twig. The shadow to Lucien’s right was more clear than those cast upon the wall before him.

Lucien felt no need to look at its sharper edges, it hurt his eyes.

The gentleman to the far right was called "Daniel". He saw to his left the same shadow Lucien saw to his right. That shadow was slumped to the floor, seeming largely uninterested in the other shadows with names. Its head hung, absently staring into the black beneath the light at the ground, specifically at the small twinkling points it called "pebbles."

Daniel as well felt a certain discomfort staring at the shadow. The gentleman refused to look for even a moment.

In the centre, knelt the shadow whose chains were the longest, called "Yves."

Yves knew himself to be least interested in the light nor the shadows to his left or right. Oftentimes, the gentleman was deep in thought, staring elsewhere, at the walls of the cave, at the floor, the ceiling, the chains. The gentleman knew it was the cave he knelt in, the floor he knelt on, the chains that knelt him down, and the ceiling that held the chains.

Another day began.

Lucien and Daniel were in the midst of arguing. Before them was a large and especially wide shadow, taking on the appearance of two clung together.

Lucien argued that the shadow was something new and thus had to be named, though he couldn’t decide between "pig" and "horse" to name it. He shouted with all his little might against the other disagreeing voice. The gentleman knew nothing of this voice but that it was adamant to refuse.

Daniel saw that the shadow was rather a pair. He saw the shadowy arm that clung the smaller part to the larger. The gentleman shouted to the top of his voice that this new thing was rather a "child" attached to a "man."

For what reason? The gentleman hadn’t argued that far.

As the voices of shadows left and right rang in his ears, Yves slumped further to the ground in his chains, intent on examining a particular little "rock." Chains rattled, not the gentleman’s own, rather that of the arguing. Lucien writhed in his shackles as if to attack the voice, to kick it to submission. Daniel dug the chains further against his wrists out of toothy spite for the other voice.

This went on for another cycle of bright and dark. The day ended, whatever dim light reflecting upon the wall disappeared.

In the dark, not a sound could be heard but the familiar noise Yves called "breath." His own was apparent, a faint echo against the walls, a light tickle against the hairs of his face. Yves nearly went to sleep himself, had it not been for a new noise rearing him away. The gentleman’s mind went to names immediately. What could name such a strange sound? Yves listened closely, it resembled "breath" but more hoarse, like stone, like chains, like nothing he had ever known before.

The question of what to name such a noise faded.

This hoarse breath quickly progressed to sound like the arguing of stone, like disagreeing pebbles.

The cave ceiling gave way under the weight of Yves and the chains kneeling him to the ground. His shackles rattled and fell. Yves felt himself falling with the chains, suddenly coming to realise the floor was real.

None of the other gentlemen woke.

Yves found himself on the ground; he felt the damp of the cave and the cold of stone and occasional points and pricks of pebbles against his shackle-sore wrists.

Yves had never felt anything like this before.

He slowly caught his bearings to this new environment. The gentlemen found a name for this sound: "falling." Yves first saw two appendages trailing to his body. Could these be what he called "legs?," those strange limbs he could feel from yet do nothing with? Yves clung to the floor with indecision and fragility. His arms, having once been chained to the ceiling, could manage inch after inch of slow rise off the ground.

What could this be called?

Yves knelt down without the aid of his shackles. He looked at the two other shadows he knew were by his sides before. His legs seemed to have a use now. Yves tried to press the floor with the flatter part at the bottom, getting one, then two of what he called "feet" on the ground. "Weight," he called it, this feeling of pressure he felt in both legs as he rose.

Weight was very much unlike the feeling of shackles digging against his wrists. The feeling was dull, almost numb. His wrists, Yves found, were free of the digging aforementioned.

Yves unsteadily held his balance as he made an attempt to move his feet forward. He saw the wall more clearly now, he saw it glimmer with a different kind of light, one not yellowish like the usual daytime glow, but a colour Yves didn’t yet have a name for.

The gentleman resolved to call it "blue."

Blue had a strange demeanour about it. It was much unlike the indifferent, piercing yellow. Yellow was bright and dim, light and dark, it had no emotion but that of the wall. Indifference could describe the colour yellow, at least as Yves had seen it so many days in a row. This new colour, this "blue", glinted like pieces of chain against the dark cave interior. Blue looked to carry the emotion of calm, of sombre, of interest. It related Yves to the dark and to the light, connecting them in his mind as two of the same single thing, like shadows of the child and the man which had begged argument before. This new colour shattered his previous notion of colour.

Blue was nothing if not gorgeous.

Yves paid no attention to the shadows left and right, just as they hadn’t paid him. He fought his weight, he gained more control over his legs with each step. Yves took those steps toward the wall.

What Yves once thought stretched endlessly in front of him was right here: right here to touch.

He felt the rough stone, the bite of cold, the damp of water against his two, his three, his five fingers. He had his whole hand pressed against the wall, the thing he had once called "reality."

What is real if I can touch reality?

Yves had nowhere forward to go. He quickly learned he could twist himself about with his legs, then he saw the entrance. The gentleman looked behind him for the first time in a long memory of looking forward. There was more blue behind him than he could imagine. Pure blue, in the rays of light, in the bulb in the sky, held endless emotion before the awestruck Yves.

He stumbled away from the wall, beyond the two gentlemen’s shadows, toward the entrance. This was the source of light, the source of dark, the source of absolutely everything Yves had known.

Is this real? Could I be asleep?

"Outside," as Yves called it, had a myriad of things to give names to.

"Grass."

"Moon."

"Tree."

"Wind."

Could this be the true reality?

Something which resembled the shadows of "man" on the wall appeared. It walked toward Yves, it peered up and down at his scraggly beard and his unkempt hair and the reddish rings around his wrists.

The man was more than a blob of dark; Yves called it "face." Two small bulbs glowed in the centre of this "face", a stone between those bulbs, and an opening containing countless white pebbles just below that.

What was more than a shadow told Yves its name, "Campbell," and asked in a new voice what Yves was doing up so late.

The gentleman had no answer for Campbell.

This man, with a face and "eyes" and "nose" and "mouth," invited Yves with an outstretched arm. Campbell hoped to shelter Yves in his "home," something which the gentleman had never seen nor named.

In steps and steps forward, Yves came to know what "home" meant.

There was a monolith standing in front of him, a single pattern of dark that held steady against a vast expanse of blue. Home was much larger than Yves. Campbell stepped forward and caved open a slit, then a bar, then a wall of piercing, dancing yellow. The colour stung in Yves’ eyes; it no longer represented indifference or disinterest, but anger, aggression, and distaste. Blots of other nameless colours stained Yves’ vision. Blue and its cousins, what Yves called "violet", "orange", "red", held to his view like the shackles to his wrists.

The gentleman yelped, touching his eyes to wipe away the feeling of yellow, that piercing in his eyes the yellow had never attacked him with before.

Yves slowly eased himself of the discomfort and was able to stare directly into the anger. Campbell led Yves forward until he was surrounded in brightness, then in yellow, then every colour imaginable and more.

The gentleman was surrounded with colours, lights, noises, senses which he couldn’t recognise. He felt a new sensation in his nose. Where he used to breathe, the air seemed to stop and hang around for a while, the gentleman called this sensation, "smell." Yves "smelled" an uncountable, unimaginable number of things; the noises and sounds came from the new things producing this "smell."

"Meat."

"Green."

"Light."

A small glinter across the hall of yellow, this colour of defeat, caught Yves’ eye. It danced with its feet planted firmly at a long, yellow stalk.

Campbell called it "candle."

The light from his candle flickered and moved at random. White and orange and yellow came from the dancing bit at the end, Yves called it "flame." The flame released greyish specks with every pass of its dance which wandered through the air above in aimless, senseless patterns. With that came a smell which stung the nose, which hung in the back of Yves’ mouth as something of a colourful aroma.

Yves was overwhelmed with real.

The gentleman excused himself from Campbell’s home, what a gentleman.

He pressed the ground against his feet with more force than he ever thought he was capable of. The world went rushing past him, the air stroked his face with every stride, every widened pace toward the cave entrance.

Yves entered the world he once thought was real. He squinted in the bluish, blackish darkness of the cave. He breathed the damp air. He felt the cold leaking from the walls. He saw two blobs of dark before him, Lucien and Daniel.

He heard them arguing about his disappearance and the chains rattling to their tossed words.

In trying to explain the outside world, Yves’ mind drew as blank as the wall which once held shadows with names. He tried to tell Lucien and to tell Daniel about the new names he’d given everything, the smells, the sights, the sounds, the senses. Yves offered to unchain them, to whisk them into transcension of reality.

They laughed.

-[|]-

Iquilius is a rogue.

_ Hic! _

Autopilot is a fickle thing. It tends to misinterpret directions, often rendering its passengers lightyears away from their actual destination. The walls creak into and out of shape at the drop or flip of a coin, with random turns reeling them from every direction at once. Hila paces the room, indecisive and given nothing to do but watch. Henry, meanwhile, has the dashboard staining his fingertips.

_ Hic! _

Unlike most destinations, which tend to have one or two orbital parents, Iquilius has six.

_ Hic! _

Stars form an anchor to which a planet can hold, and by which it can be located. Iquilius, on the other hand,  _ is _ the anchor, giving it an annoying reputation for being hard to find. It can be compared to Snow White in the sense the Evil Queen could never find her hiding spot in the forest. However, the comparison only works if one of the dwarves had died in a terrible mining accident.

_ It likely would have been Dopey, poor sap. _

Amelia’s cot blows like a flag. Her headache returns in much the same manner a painkiller wears off. She sets the Book on her bed and shifts her weight as if attempting to find comfort. Having finished the Book’s…  _ interesting  _ story, she finds her surroundings unfamiliar.

Red and blue take sides to either horizon; the speed of light cracks and crumbles. Amelia stands to feel her centre of mass wobble about five feet to her left. She stumbles in Henry’s general direction wearing an expression like that of someone attempting to solve an empty sudoku.

_ Hic! _

"Henry, what are you doing?," trips Amelia over her words.

The android threads to a sudden stop, nearly leaving half the ship a lightyear behind. Henry shoves Hila by the controls; without so much as a breath, he takes Amy by the arm and drags her back to bed.

Amelia echoes her question, this time spiked with concern as well as a pounding headache.

"You need to sit down. You’ve been badly hurt and I can’t be the one responsible for a human corpse several parsecs from where they’re supposed to be buried," Henry replies,  _ "Hila! Hila– hejde ktu të deo! Jetou’dje m’Ami!...  _ Here, sit yourself down, Hila will take care of you."

"What do you mean I’m hurt? What happened?"

"Are your bandages too tight?," asks the android, stroking the bloodied cloth around her skull.

Her hands jerk upward, "Bandages?!"

"Don’t worry," the android steps around the contour of his ship, he calls, "I need to tend to something over here, alright? Just– just stay where you are while Hila and I find you a good hospital."

Amy stares, "Is it that bad…?"

Henry leaves to switch places with Hila. Tying black wires about his fingers, he threads the ringship forward. The laws of physics break down like always seems to be the case in science fiction. A notification engulfs the screen; it appears they’ve found it. Henry dips his finger into the coloured surface. In a brief instant, the vessel changes course. A ring of black sky wraps itself between blue and red; constellations become streaks of whitish light dragged across the horizon like bits of chalk scattered across one’s driveway. The fabric of reality tears along their path through the universe. Iquilius has yet to make itself apparent.

_ The name, "Iquilius," is actually incorrect. _

The pronunciation came out of a long and convoluted series of bastardisations of the phrase "E Guel Nus," which in the planet’s official language of commerce means "welcoming water."

_ That can be misleading. _

Henry must have overshot it. He deactivates the autopilot and pulls the ship into a U-turn, warping his centre of mass off centre for the umpteenth time in a row. Maybe this time, the ringship won’t whistle by travelling thirteen times the speed of light. The android forces through his leaden throat an artificial sigh of relief as E Guel Nus barrels into view. A few taps to the wall and another window appears. Hila and Amelia watch the bright streaks of a vast ocean fill their view. Reflections of blackened steel and orange sun grow as they draw closer to the water. Flinging upward bits of sea with every kilometre, Henry skids along the ocean’s endless surface, searching for a dry place to land.

_ He and water mix like oil would the latter. _

His circuits scream and cry to the tune of how bad an idea this is. A large archipelago sweeps into focus. Henry lowers the ringship onto a small lot set for tourists and relaxes about as suddenly as a collapsing apartment building. A cushion of air ebbs from below the vessel. Fresh mist enters through a widening crack in the hatch.

Amelia seizes her bag, carrying a patient little Book inside, and stands to feel liquid discomfort slosh about the inside of her head. She stumbles about the ringship’s curve only to be caught mid-fall and dragged the rest of the way outside. A thin trickle of blood runs down her cheek. Amelia looks up despite it threatening to enter her eyes and sees two crimson dots shining weakly in the sky.

The two drag her across town. Gangly flora with blue leaves float independently among islands of foamed rock. A haphazard combination of rope, chains, and bridges connect these trees and islands to form a complex web. Bright cerulean curls grow in patches atop these floating stones. The grass tangles like unkempt hair.

Amelia is set upon her feet in the desperate hopes she doesn’t trip into the ocean and drown. She finds herself staring unto a vast horizon over which more islands disappear. The sea shimmers with orange starlight; the sky glows under simultaneous and eternal night and day. Beneath the surface wander shadowy creatures amidst a network of interwired lights which dance like flames via disturbances in the water. As the Book groans, casting boundless noise unto the expanse, Athene’s spear jabs the inside of her skull.

Henry stops for a second and gestures for a pocket before realising he isn’t wearing any pants.

He turns to Hila,  _ “Ha së bëmi shakta fushkasudhetorën?” _

_ “Jë, bëmi’sa mesherë sha,”  _ Hila replies,  _ “Mous të nutë dio, kriasei’dje hana.” _

Hila flattens her hand to expose her palm to the suns’ light. The teardrop device embedded therein pierces the dusk.  _ Colour is important.  _ The air begins to bite and her hand blazes brighter than day. Gentle warmth swelters to feel like a bolt of lightning had touched down a few inches from Amy’s face. Hila’s palm challenges the sky’s weak glow; the bloodstain suns fade to white.

_ How does she do this? Quantum bullshit. _

Everybody’s heard of the equation: E=mc 2 . Albert Einstein proposed it in 1915 to describe the relationship between matter and energy, stating they were two sides of a coin.

The tehk have a way of flipping that coin which simply involves breaking multiple laws of physics at once.

History textbooks are quick to depict the transition of Tehk to godlike status as magical and improbable to ever happen again. This misleads many into thinking someone just cracked a black hole open like an egg and asked whatever came out for the power to bend reality at a whim.

Unfortunately, it was much simpler than that.

When black holes spin, they gather existence in a spiral much akin to a whirlpool. Throwing an object into this drainpipe, called the ergosphere, forces it to move much faster than it did before.

Constructing a roughly spherical mirror around the black hole and firing in a beam of charged particles achieves one of two things: creating the most impressive bomb in the universe, or generating practically infinite energy. Using this property, which physicists on Earth gave the name "superradiant scattering," the tehk were able to tear a hole into the universe and sow therein the seeds for another. These pockets of artificial spacetime could be given custom laws of physics, fitted to an individual’s taste or their desire for head-splitting nausea.

Later on, the Energetic Universe was born from an accident which resulted in someone’s thorough evisceration.

_ "If infinite energy isn’t enough, have more!" _

E=mc 2 became a part of this mess when someone decided this bottomless coffee cup’s worth of energy could be used to ruin science at the atomic level.

Conservation of mass was shattered with the Q.A.M., or the Quantum Agitation Matrix.

Hila had the gall to purchase one.

Passing through a market she found it caught her eye: a teardrop-shaped device, roughly the size of her palm. She thought it would be useful, a device that could create matter from nothing, then she learned it was meant to be surgically implanted. It was uncomfortable, it restricted her hand, and it burned.

_ Tehk skin is remarkable for its ability to catch fire. _

Amelia shields her eyes. Her face warms as though she were thrown headfirst into a campfire. As soon as it began, the brightness fades, leaving not only a nasty burn in her retinas, but a decent few questions waiting to be asked. Hila’s palm releases a black pus which solidifies into one homogenous screen; she examines it for a while to make sure it functions correctly. Seeing that it works as intended, she hands it to the android, who takes it wearing as contempt an expression plastic can manage.

_ It suddenly got more humid. _

"What happened?," cries Amelia through colourfully impaired vision, "Henry, did your wife just transcend our plane of existence or something?"

The android replies, "Oh, no, she’s still here. It’s just a thing she does from time to time."

"Hila explodes?"

Amy’s retinas gradually clear; the hues charred into her vision finally wipe away to reveal black smoke dancing between Hila’s fingers.

Henry shakes his head, "She damn near does."

The wonderful scent of barbecued flesh burns the hairs out of Amelia’s nose. She mumbles behind the android, trailing Hila behind her.

As she walks, her head begins to feel lighter, yet simultaneously like it’s full of mercury. The weight rocks her back and forth, casting a growing uncertainty as to whether each step will hit solid ground. Amelia grows nauseous. The sea of dancing colours throws her off balance like the quicksilver between her ears. Her limbs grow heavy, but numb to the weight. She can hardly feel the stream of blood running down her chin.

Henry wanders island after island, far overstaying his welcome to lead the organics along a meaningless search. The waves never appear to pull his steps from the bridge.  _ This is partly a result of panic.  _ He glances at the black amalgam every now and then to remind himself of where he’s going, as well as back at Amelia to ensure she hasn’t drowned. The ropes clinging islands together gradually disappear in favour of steel cables and wire. As they drift farther into the city, the gaps between islands appear to grow. Amy looms about. Her head threatens to pull her to the ground. She throws her dazed expression aloft.

Incredible architecture coils overhead. It seems implausible that structures this large can float so peacefully. The city elicits a nearly Venetian concern that everything might sink into the ocean to be lost forever. In lieu of canals, though many still appear, there’s a complex tapestry of overlapping walkways. The bridges appear to do nothing but convolute the directions a stranger might hear upon getting lost and asking a local for help. 

Amelia’s eyes fall to watch the ground. The swaying draws more attention to her shoes and where they land, if at all. Intricate carvings dress the timber. Delicate metal ornaments cling to the wood. Some of them are missing. Amy fumbles in pursuit of the android, lagging behind Hila in the process. Blood trickles from her chin. A clear streak of red climbs the hem of her shirt.

The water breaks.

Several chunks of ice float to the surface. A quiet green blob strides beneath the waves in pursuit of a smaller, more doomed blob. Droplets of water jump from the struggle to prick Amelia’s face as she watches. The ordeal grows violent as patches of colour burst from one of the creatures. More ice floats to obscure the encounter. The only indications that anything is happening are subtle waves in the shroud.

Something breaches.

It shatters frozen muscle and bone between its jaws. Amelia jumps. The creature splinters the water, leaving ripples in its wake. It exposes itself to the light and reveals a long wound trailing down its back. Ameila watches it disappear into the abyss. Leftover particles of flesh melt, bleeding their contents into the water. 

Hila glances back to find Amelia dazed and several paces behind. She and her husband stop to let her catch up.

The three finally happen upon a relatively short building whose exterior bears intricate depictions of mythical figure wrought from metal. Above the door hangs a sign that would be too heavy to support had it a few more words to weigh it down. Labelling it in multiple languages is the name of the location. In all manner of speaking it translates to "Rath Ran Des Medical Centre." The clinic looms overhead several floors. Every element to its foundation exhibits ornate and colourful artworks which weave through its architecture in every medium imaginable. Disorganised bundles of cable and chain thread the building to its neighbours, regardless of distance. As the three approach, they find its doors have been painted using vibrant colours arranged into careful sets of rings.

Henry enters and the others follow.

Amelia stumbles in last. Her head is pounding. With more and more stabs into her skull, her legs appear to dissolve. Her fingers feel stiff and heavy; her arms stretch to the floor. Quicksilver seems to fill her mind and weigh it to the ground. Each step further into the "Atlantis" Medical Centre meets her with another concerned look.

_ Her shoes are red. _

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This work is slow in the making, so please be patient! :)
> 
> I would love to hear anyone's opinions on where I can fix anything!


End file.
